“HUMAN RELATIONS 
IN INDUSTRY” 


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NINTH ANNUAL Oy | “9 Moon 
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Sree ER BAY. on 
Pye GEORGE, N. Y. 


mioust. 20-10. 29, 1926 


“A Conference, increasingly recognized 
for its progressive program, frank inter- 
change of opinion, inspiring ideals, fine 
fellowship, and far-reaching influence” 


Under the auspices of the 
Ieee Pon A Lh DE PARTMENT ‘\ 
of the 
YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS *% 


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TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Urge ck calgs Pk eee eee oe panera a 2 ho ee SS ee 1 
Special Se guvEyag Ln le A ee ae 2 
SWEET EES Ri aria TELS hn eo Ee Se lar a 3 
Pee eee eT SRST ea einige cae A a 4 
A Program for the New Industrial Daveah tee ailian? Gilbreth:; «.. ua. - 7 
Sectional Conference on “Pensions and Annuities’.............0....6.5... Ly 
Sectional Conference on “Employe Stock Ownership”................ a 18 


Sectional Conference on “Making the Best Use of the Present Labor 


pee TIS: au ON mens ds cas 2) ot Re en eee ae a 19 
Seronale Onieteice one. raining tor leadership 6.26... 6.2. vee eae 21 
See midi Oniecrenec: Oumeematiroad Eroplemis 222) ../28s i. ie ve cee ae 22 
uiweee oulosepiy of the Payroll joe Mitchell Chapple... 0.2... 6... .606 0005 23 
Some of the Tap Roots of Human Relations in Industry, Ernest T. Trigg 26 
An Experience with Employe Representation, Harvey G. Ellerd......... 34 
Cooperation and Progress in Modern Industry, James A. Emery........ 51 


Improving Human Relations in The Transportation Industry, A. J, County 62 


American Industry and International Relations, P. Whitwell Wilson.... 77 
mies Tey ee URES 9 oS NN RN ae ES ea a ee 85 
The Hampton Quartet: P. Whitwell Wilson 
Silver Bay: Charles R. Towson 
The Conference Spirit: Fred H. Rindge, Jr. 
Meee Few OV en ina thew) VV Oll. fc 2 fac) tees na et bi cea es eu vane goss 88 
Meee Camiciiomanmeestinionios“irom Welesatess.. oo. i oe oo ee es oo 
pee ver Omen rt Vy itiain wie Hatching... 4.5... ..0. 66.0.0. e ae 101 


796948 


“HUMAN RELATIONS. IN. INDUSTRY” 


__A Summary of the 
NINTH ANNUAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE 


Silver Bay on Lake George, N. Y. 
August 26 to 29, 1926 


FOREWORD 


is “different.” At Silver Bay representatives of capital, labor, and the 

public meet together on a common footing, apart from the disconcerting 
hum of machinery, and discuss their mutual problems in an atmosphere which 
makes for real understanding. 


This year’s conference was attended by 532 delegates from 90 cities and 3 
foreign countries. Regular visitors in addition increased the attendance. to 
approximately 600. ‘These delegates represented a true cross-section of industry: 
30 per cent were major executives, 18 per cent were personnel and research man- 
agers, 14 per cent foremen, 10 per cent employes, 5 per cent professional men, 
4 per cent employe representatives, and 19 per cent Y M C A secretaries, 
educators, religious leaders, etc. All the delegates gathered together as one big 
family! 

The Industrial Department of. the Y M C A has for some years been pro- 
moting similar summer conferences at Blue Ridge, N. C.; Estes Park, Colo.; and 
Lake Geneva, Wis. State and local conferences have also developed. Universal 
expressions of enthusiasm justify the opinion that the Human Relations Con- 
ferences have come to stay and ought to prove an increasingly influential factor 
in American industry. 

It is obviously impossible to print the entire proceedings of the Silver Bay 
Conference and it has therefore been necessary for the editor to use his own 
discretion in the material selected for this report. It has been difficult, also, to 
delete many of the fine paragraphs of eloquence and oratory, wit and humor, 
live questions and spirited discussions which characterized every session. ‘Those 
who were not at the Conference and who read this report can but faintly imagine 
all they have missed. ‘The only way for them to retrieve their loss is for them 
to attend next time. The testimonies at the Sunday morning session speak for 
themselves. We had a great Conference but hope to have a greater Conference 
in 1927. 

This report is presented to our friends to the end that we may all work together 
for better human relations in industry. 


Ie these days of multitudinous conferences, it is refreshing to find one which 


Frep H. Rinpce, Jr., 
Executive Secretary, 
Industrial Conference. 


1 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Special Features 


The musical program was one long to be remembered. M. J. Brines 
led the mass singing in his usual masterly style and contributed much by 
his beautiful solos. The Hampton Institute Quartet sang at every session, 
and helped not only to enrich the program but also to develop finer race 
relationships. 


Following each address there was lively and fearless discussion which 
was replete with practical suggestions. 


Appropriate industrial motion pictures were shown on the lawn each 
evening. 


The Daily Bulletin was snappy and to the point and great credit is 
due the editorial staff. 


The weather man was exceedingly kind and the recreational program 
was more extensive than ever. 


The courtesies of Fort Ticonderoga were extended to delegates by 
Mr. and Mrs. S. H. P. Pell, and the Saturday afternoon trip to the 
Fort was well attended and very delightful. 


A General Committee of nineteen and several sub-committees rendered 
splendid service before and during the Conference. 


Silver Bay and Slim Point 


bo 


The Conference Committee 


R. D. Benson, R. D. and W. S. Benson, New York, N. Y. 

E. H. Betts, Cluett Peabody and Company, Inc., Troy, N. Y. 

S. L. Busy, Crocker-McElwain Company, Hegere Mass. , 

C. S. Cuine, U. S. Rubber Company, New York, N. Y. 

H. G. Errerp, Armour and Company, Chicago, III. 

Pees J HOSTER CentralnY>M. GrA, Brooklyn, N.Y. 

Joun P. Frey, International Molders’ Journal, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

E. K. Harti, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, New York, 


Nia Ye 

Cuas. R. Hoox, American Rolling Mill Company, Middletown, Ohio. 

A. L. Humpurey, Westinghouse Air Brake Company, Wilmerding, Pa. 

F. J. Kinassury, Bridgeport Brass Company, Bridgeport, Conn. 

J. M. Larkin, Bethlehem Steel Company, Bethlehem, Pa. 

S. H. Lipsy, General Electric Company, Bloomfield, N. J. 

T. G. Spates, Richard Hellmann, Inc., Long Island City, N. Y. 

Cuas. R. Towson, Deering, Milliken and Company, Inc., New York, 
Nase 

Joun G. Waser, New York Central Railroad Company, New York, 
EY: 

WitiiAmM H. Woopin, American Car and Foundry Co., New York, N. Y. 

Roy V. Wricut, Railway Age, New York, N. Y. 


Chairman 
ARTHUR H. Youna, Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., New York, 
NY: 
Executive Secretary 


Frep H. RInpcE, JR., Industrial Department, Y M C A, National Council. 
347 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 


2 | 
ov. 


Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Program 


THURSDAY, AUGUST 26 


2:00 p.m. OPENING SESSION: 
C. S. Ching, U. S. Rubber Company, presiding. 
Music: Mass singing, led by M. J. Brines. 
Selections by Hampton Institute Quartet. 
Welcome to Delegates: Chas. R. Towson, President, Silver Bay 
Association. 
Address; “A Program for the New Industrial Day,’ Mrs. Lillian 
Gilbreth, President, Gilbreth, Inc. 


3:30 to 5:00 p.m. SECTIONAL CONFERENCES: 


1. Pensions and Annuities, C. S. Ching,-Supervisor of Industrial 
Relations, U. S. Rubber Company, leader. 

2. Employe Stock Ownership, Seth L. Bush, Manager, Research 
Department, Crocker-McElwain Company, leader. 

3. Making the Best Use of the Present Labor Supply, T. G. Spates, 
Assistant to President, Richard Hellmann, Inc., leader. 

4. Training for Leadership, Professor N. C. Miller, Director, In- 
dustrial Extension Division, Rutgers University, leader. 


5. Railroad Problems, Roy V. Wright, Editor, Railway Age, leader. 
7:00 p.m. APPROPRIATE Motion Picrures—on the lawn. 


7:45 p.m. EVENING SESSION : 
R. D. Benson, R. D. and W~ S: Benson, Sekai 
Mass singing. 
Discussion of Mrs. Gilbreth’s address. 
Hampton Institute Quartet. 
Address: “The Philosophy of the hil ” Joe Mitchell Chapple 
Editor, National Magazine. 


FRIDAY, AUGUST 27 


9:00 a.m. MorninG SESSION : 
fF. J. Kinecssury, Bridgeport Brass Company, presiding. 

Mass singing. 

Address: “Some of the Tap Roots of Human Relations in Industry,” 
Ernest T. Trigg, President, John Lucas and Company, Inc., 
Chairman, Congresseof American Industry, Philadelphia. 

Discussion. 

Hampton Institute Quartet. 


Address: “An Experience with Employe Representation,’ Harvey 
G. Ellerd, Assistant to. Vice-President, Armour and Company. 
Discussion. 


2:00 p.m. AFTERNOON SESSION: 
C. S. Ching, U. S: Rubber Company, presiding. 
Reports from sectional conferences. 


3:00 p.m. RECREATION. Baseball game—Albany vs. Troy. 
7:00 p.m. INDUSTRIAL Motion PicrurEs—on the lawn. 
7:45 p.m. EVENING SESSION: 


S. L. Busu, Crocker-McElwain Company, presiding. 
Mass singing. 
Hampton Institute Quartet. 
Address: “Cooperation and Progress in Modern Industry,’ James 


A. Emery, General Counsel, National Association of Manufac- 
turers. 
Discussion. 


SATURDAY, AUGUST 28 


9:00 a.m. MorNING SESSION: 
Roy V. Wright, Railway Age, presiding. 

Mass singing. 

Address: “Improving Human Relations in the Transportation In- 
dustry,’ A. J. County, Vice-President, Treasury, Accounting 
Departments and Corporate Work, Pennsylvania Railroad Sys- 
tem. 

Discussion. 

Hampton Institute Quartet. ; 

Address: “American Industry and International Relations,’ P. Whit- 
well Wilson, author, expert on world affairs, former member 
of the British Parliament. 

Discussion. 


' 


AFTERNOON: RECREATION. . 
Visit to Fort Ticonderoga, launch trip to Paradise Bay, field and 
water sports, mountain climbing, games, etc. 


7:00 p.m. INpDUstrrAL Motion Pictures—on the lawn. 


5 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


7:45 p.m. EVENING SESSION: 


S. H. Libby, General Electric Company, presiding. 
Some Appreciations—The Hampton Quartet: P. Whitwell Wilson. 
Silver Bay: Charles R. Towson. 
The Spirit of the Conference: Fred H. Rindge, Jr. 
Address: “Labor's Viewpoint,’ Matthew Woll, Vice-President, 
American Federation of Labor. 
Discussion. 


SUNDAY, AUGUST 29 


9:00 a.m. Morninc SESSION: 
Conference Hour—Round Table Discussion. 
Charles R. Towson, Deering Milliken and Company, leader. 


10:30 a.m. Frnat MEETING: 
Roy V. Wright, Railway Age, presiding. 
Solo: M. J. Brines. 
Closing Address: “Industry and Religion,’ Dr. Wm. J. Hutchins, 
President, Berea College, Kentucky. 
Final Selection—Hampton Institute Quartet. 


Silver Bay Dock 


A PROGRAM 
FOR THE NEW INDUSTRIAL DAY 


Mrs. Lillian Gilbreth 
President, Gilbreth, Inc., Montclair, N. J. 


I am to talk to you for a few moments this after- 
noon on “A Program for the New Industrial Day.” 
Nothing that I can bring to you will be of such signi- 
ficance as the things that you can bring to each other 
in the discussion of the subject. All that I can hope 
to do in these few minutes is to call to your atten- 
tion some of the subjects with which this program 
2 should deal, and I feel that only as you take up these 
apes and bring your experience to us all, will any message that I 
bring be of value. 

What has this program to do with the past of the subject? In this 
new era that is coming we can neither afford to be handicapped by pay- 
ing too much attention tothe past, nor can we afford to disregard it and 
perhaps to make over again mistakes that have been made, or to fail to 
profit by methods that have been successful. 

In this country and abroad there is now being made a survey of what 
the past has contributed to the subject of industrial betterment, of in- 
dustrial relations, of the development of such mechanisms as scientific 
management. If you, as they come to you, will cooperate with the people 
who are trying to put this experience of the past into usable form, we 
shall have ready to come before groups like this, in a year or two, a 
real summary of what has been accomplished. 

Added to the values of the past, we have today the need of making a 
careful survey of our own country as it stands in regard to all questions 
that have to do with human relations. Two years ago this summer, in 
the Prague Conference, it was brought to our attention that we need 
more than anything else to know exactly what is happening, and where 
and how. I know you must all have had people come to you from over- 
seas, wanting to see this, that, and the other, and you have been faced 
with the problem of telling them off hand where to go and what to see. 
Many a traveler has never found, until boarding his return boat, a list 
of the things which really would have been significant for him. If this 
group can help in outlining the things which are significant for those 
who come to our plants, it will be one of the important factors in our 
present and future program. 

Just exactly what subjects would such a survey cover, if it were going 
to be of most benefit? The first thing we must consider, and in some 


7 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


ways the most interesting, is the philosophy of work. Just what do we 
believe work is, and what will it bring us? A European economist said 
a year or two ago that the great differences between America and the 
countries of Europe are two. One is that here we believe work is worth 
doing, and that we use our rest periods of one sort and another either 
for leisure or recreation, as periods in which we gain new strength to 
go back to the work we love. Now those of us who go abroad are 
finding perhaps an increase in those who hold this philosophy, but we 
are still finding everywhere that older European philosophy of work, 
which makes it not as satisfying as leisure—the feeling that we work 
in order to gain time, leisure, and money for the things we care for most. 

I should hate to think that the American people had no appreciation 
of leisure, but I do feel that sf we are going to make industrial work 
assume tts rightful place, we must stand for the philosophy that work 
is worth doing, and that it 1s the thing we are here for. 

The second difference between the European position and our own, 
a very understandable difference, is in the attitude of optimism toward 
what is going on. It is quite natural that we are an optimistic people. 
- We are wealthy, fortunate, with a history of optimism, and much to look 
forward to. Why shouldn’t we be hopeful? The hope and belief that 
everything will turn out right, lifts us up and carries us forward; while 
any nation which has back of it a series of disappointments, a chain of 
calamities, a long stretch of poverty, naturally looks with a more pessi- 
mistic and careful attitude toward what is going to happen in the future. 
This is of great significance because we have so many coming to us 
from the other side who naturally bring with them this feeling of pessi- 
mism. Their experience has justified it, perhaps, and we can never 
expect to go ahead putting in the things that we feel are for their 
benefit until we have understood, sympathized with, and finally gotten 
them out of, this pessimistic attitude. Also we must appreciate that 
attitude over there, and adapt our endeavors to their way of looking at 
things. One hears that American methods won’t work abroad; that 
scientific management and other developments which have proven suc- 
cessful in our plants don’t succeed over there. Continually in every 
country they ask: “Does it really work with you?” then add “Well, 
what is the matter with it here, and why won’t it really go through?” 
It won’t work unless we appreciate their philosophy and their psychology ; 
or if one simply tries to jam it on and jam it down, without thinking 
the thing completely through. Any of you who have been in plants where 
improvements have been jammed down, in this country, know that 
. method doesn’t succeed here either. . 

So much perhaps, then, for the newer type of philosophy, or our own 
American belief in work and optimism. 


8 


In the second place, the newer industrial program must have a new 
type of economics. You are to have the pleasure later of hearing a 
representative of the American Federation of Labor, an excellent ex- 
ponent of the newer type of economics. I, sometimes feel that if each 
one of us could take six months and do what would be most profitable, 
he would return to the classroom and discover the changes in modern 
economics since he went to school. It may be bad not to know anything 
about economics, but it is even worse to be an exponent of economics 
of the wrong school; and many of us might find it would take several 
months of destructive work to tear out all the things we were taught to 
believe that are absolutely wrong, before we began building up a newer 
economic theory. 

Labor is no longer a commodity. ‘The term “producers” has been 
extended to include many types who were not rated as producers before. 
The word “producer” has become the most desirable in the language, 
just as the word “parasite” has become the most undesirable. We will 
have to realize that some of the older types of economics embodied only 
theories and that our economics must change and adapt itself and become 
livable and vital all the time, if it is going to mean anything. Many of 
our discussions and disputes would be done away with, if we could come 
to a fundamental agreement as to what an efficient economic theory 
really is. 

Next, what is the place of engineering in the newer industrial pro- 
gram? I know many of you are engineers or work with engineers—and 
when I speak of an engineer I do not mean specifically a person with an 
engineering training, but one with an engineering mind, a mind that 
believes in measurement, knows how to measure, and is willing to abide 
by the results, whether they agree with his preconceived opinion or not. 

We have had recently a tendency all over the world, to let the engineer 
drop out of human relations work. We are willing to acknowledge that 
the engineer has been a pioneer in industry, that an engineering train- 
ing is essential for certain things; we stress sometimes more than we 
should the fact that some of the older engineers, because it was not 
fashionable in their day, did not have the training in the human sciences 
that made them always appreciate how to handle human beings. But if 
we let the engineer, with his passion for accurate measurement, drop 
out of the picture, we are losing something important. You may make 
a fine improvement in method, only to find at the end of six months or 
a year that you should have had a machine, or had power come in, in 
its place. You make another investigation in another place and improve 
a method, only to find that in place of studying the man you should have 
studied primarily the machine, to see where the levers were placed in 
relation to the human being using it. Jf every one in thts place would go 


9 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


back to his plant next week and look at his machines, not as fine pteces 
of design, but as something to be used by human creatures with the easiest 
motions and the least fatigue, some of the results would be astounding. 
The only makers of mechanism who really seem to think adequately in 
these terms are the automobile manufacturers. The operating parts of 
most automobiles are so placed that motion study, fatigue study, 
and ease of operation are considered, 

So much for the engineer and the machine element. Now for the 
human element. 

I trust there will be some discussion of the increasing importance of 
the medical man and the nurse tn mdustry. Perhaps every man and 
woman in this room represents a plant where the medical side is taken 
care of thoroughly, but there are countless plants, large and small, in 
this country, where an adequate physical examination is not given. Those 
of us who are trying to improve conditions, standardize methods, and 
eliminate fatigue, find in the end that perhaps the worker needed first 
of all to have his eyes tested, to have his tonsils out, and various other 
things done which a doctor would have found necessary in the first place. 

We supplement the medical man increasingly with the physiologist who 
can stay in the laboratory and make the investigations that are needed. 
I plead for more backing for men of this kind. We find in fatigue study 
that there is so little being done in the physiological laboratories to test 
the various factors compared to what could be done, and this country 
is far behind some others. If anyone knows of a really adequate phy- 
siological study being made in any laboratory in this country it would 
be a real service to have that put at the disposal of this group. The 
Engineering Council wants to raise a large sum to investigate fatigue, 
but quite naturally it seeks specific problems, a real method of attack, 
and a place where such work is being done or can be done adequately. 

Along with the physiologist comes the psychologist, and it would be~ 
most profitable to have the frank reactions of this group on the place 
of the psychologist in industry—what he has done, what he can do, and 
your own confidential experience with such things as psychological tests 
in your plants. In many places abroad they are simplifying tests very 
much. Asa matter of fact, in many plants only two tests are being given. 
One is a very simple test—holes in a board and a certain number of things 
put into the holes to fill them up, to see whether one likes to do work 
which must be done swiftly but does not require any great amount of 
accuracy. The other consists of putting some fine vibrating wires into 
little holes, which must be done very slowly and carefully, to see whether 
one likes to do work which requires considerable accuracy, but not speed. 
That is the fundamental division of the workers. I noted two things 
with much interest. One was that the behavior of the subject being tested 


10 


was studied with the greatest care; and the other was that he was always 
questioned as to whether he liked that kind of work or not. Those two 
things really act as tests of psychological tests. If someone comes into 
your plant and starts testing, and he simply calls in the workers in great 
indiscriminate groups and pays no special attention to how they behave 
while being tested, you are justified in doubting the validity of the tests. 
If the investigator fails to discover whether the worker likes the work, 
he is entirely disregarding one of the most important elements. 

Most psychologists acknowlege that at first psychological tests claimed 
they accomplished more than they really could. There was failure to 
discriminate between information and aptitude tests. There are many 
questions to be discussed in this field. Must one have a trained psy- 
chologist, or can some apt person within the plant learn something of 
psychological technique? That is something of great interest. 

I found on the other side, just as here, splendid work being done in 
industry by firms having psychologists come and live with the jobs long 
enough to know what they are about. I feel sure that man after man 
could step up here, if he would, and say: ‘In my plant we have taken 
certain operations and analyzed them down to the few things that are 
really significant. We are testing for that. We fail here, and we succeed 
there.” If we could secure that information, we would have before us 
a body of facts never fairly put before any group, because it is not quite 
fashionable to be interested in psychological tests today. One must be 
interested in the psychiatric method of approach if one is really in style; 
and many people are afraid that simple and home-made methods will 
be laughed at. 

I want to say a word as to the blame of industry itself when tests do 
not work. I know plant after plant where a well-trained, ambitious young 
psychologist has come in and done his best, only to find at the end that 
the plant itself has no records with which he can compare results. He 
says, “I think the five best men in this group are a, b, c, d, and e. What 
do your records show?” And they say “We have no records.” Yet 
when the results expected in a ridiculously short time are not all industry 
hopes for, out goes the psychologist and the tests and the whole thing 
is discredited! 

Along with the development of psychology is coming an interest in 
psychiatry. Whether we believe in the most specialized form such as 
psychoanalysis or in some less specialized form, there are certain things 
that are important and psychiatry is a part of our newer industrial pro- 
gram. Because, while humanizing the machine side and testing. intelli- 
gence, a great many of us have forgotten entirely to consider the emo- 
tions—whether a person really desires to work or does not, whether he 
is happy or miserable in hts surroundings, whether he ss fulfilling his 


TL 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


real wants in the situation, or ts doing something diametrically against 
hts desires. : 

There are two things to remember: We can never afford to forget 
individual differences. The psychiatrist has taught us that. Every man 
is a different combination and we cannot afford, no matter how clever 
our standard or how it is derived, to say, “You must do this 100 per 
cent as it is laid down here,” because perhaps he is not a 100 per cent 
man such as that was designed for. And in the second place, we must 
never forget fundamental likenesses. Those of you who have been 
recently in Europe must have been, as I was, astounded to see how much 
more alike people grow every year. Maybe it is the radio or the motion 
pictures. I don’t know what it is. But if you do not look at the roofs, 
or listen to the conversation, and just observe a group coming down the 
street in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, or New York, the differ- 
ences seem to be becoming less and less, every year. The sdme thing 
is true of mental attitudes of peoples. This is going to make an enormous 
difference, if it has not already. The psychiatrist with his listing of the 
fundamental “wants” of everyone of us has done a great job and we 
simply cannot afford to leave him out of the picture. 

And finally, in this research group, of course, comes the educator. Don’t 
let us in our teaching technique get out of date in industry. You cannot 
afford to think that because a person who is teaching was the star person 
in that sort of thing even three or four years ago, you have modern 
technique. We are so apt to think that technique develops in all lines 
with which we are intimately acquainted, but that the dear old professors 
sit back in the colleges just the way they always did. They don’t. Per- 
haps some of them do, but go to any good normal school, or visit your 
own youngsters in the grades, and notice the sort of teaching being done 
these days, and then check up the teaching in your own plant to see 
whether it really is what it ought to be! 

We are called upon to keep in touch not only with industrial education 
but with all education today. You are getting in your plants and you 
will continue to get for years and years the product of the present-day 
college, the high school, the grammar school, the kindergarten, and the 
nursery, not to speak of the home; and unless you go down and sit in 
the nursery school, for example, for a day or two, and see what is hap- 
pening there, you have no idea of the interrelations that are taking place. 
You may find there a freedom that those children are acquiring in their 
development that will give you a thought of freedom for your workers. 
You may find there a lack of insisting on right habits, a tendency to let 
the child drift from one thing to another without having a firm objective, 
that will make you go back and say, “Well, at least so far as my work 
is concerned, while we are going to have freedom and all we can of it, 


12 


we are going to have right habits and objectives firmly thought through.” 

Foremen’s courses are perhaps accomplishing the most significant thing 
in education in industry, and yet I wonder often why they are not doing 
more. I wonder if any of you have had an experience that parallels mine. 
I gave a talk not long ago in a factory meeting at which were present 
the foremen, managers, and two Vice-Presidents. The introduction was 
given by the Vice-President, who didn’t dash in and out for a moment, 
having more important things to do. After I talked for a short time, 
he took every point and applied it. He said, “Miss Brown, | think that 
is so in your room.” And “Jim, I think that is true in yours.” Now, I 
wonder how many foremen’s meetings are falling down because they are 
not getting the backing that they should have. 

Just a few words on research. Of course a group like this stands for 
research. The research in the sciences and on the physical side—the 
machinery side—has been done well, and we must now parallel that with 
an interest in the human element. I have quite nobly refrained from 
telling you about our own type of research in motion study, skill study, 
and fatigue study. I would like to mention just an example in each 
field. 

In motion study we are finding abroad and here an increasing interest 
in standardization and in finding the one best way to do work. I know, 
of course, that motion study is only one of myriads of ways of getting 
at standardization. We have found that it is always necessary to make 
clear that when you say you are finding the one best way, you simply 
mean that you are finding a norm, a standard, from which we calculate 
our individual differences. Given that, we are discovering everywhere 
this desire for finding and establishing standards. 

In the field of skill study I think we have made a distinct advance 
in lining up some of the psychologists who have the most stimulating 
methods of attack. For example, Professor Pear in England is taking 
up the subject of skill and is doing what we wanted to have done long 
ago, dividing skills into three grades: first the kind required to run an 
automobile on a straight road, if nothing special happens; second, when 
you learn to handle every possible sort of emergency successfully; and 
third, and this is his special contribution, when you can really express 
yourself in that activity so that it becomes not only a skill, but your 
skill. I think if we carry that into our study of skills and learn to trans- 
fer skills, we will have a real indication for our program in that field. 

As for fatigue study, it is vital not only on the physical side, which is 
becoming less significant as we add labor-saving machines and power, 
but on the psychological side. If you could go from group to group in 
industry, and say, “What makes you tired—what days do you find 
wearing, and what not,” what would you find were the factors involved? 


13 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Worry, friction, clutter, monotony, lack of cooperation, lonely job—that 
sort of thing. 

You cannot deal with any of these subjects separately, without con- 
sidering the rest; the psychology of the total situation, what happens 
in the twenty-four hour day; every factor as it reacts on every other 
factor and as it contributes to make the work interesting. Interest lies 
at the base of our American psychology of work. We love work best, 
because it is the most interesting. Sometimes I think that to the Ameri- 
can man and woman it is really the romance of industry that fascinates 
him! You know what Kipling said about romance: 


“Thy face is far from this our war, 
Our call and counter-cry, 

I shall not find Thee quick and kind, 
Nor know Thee till I die. 

Enough for me in dreams to see 
And touch Thy garments hem; 

Thy feet have trod so near to God 
I may not follow them!” 


Discussion of Mrs. Gilbreth’s Address. 


CuHarLes R. Towson, Deering Milliken and Company, New York,’ 
N. Y.: This is the best Conference we have had thus far. Next year . 
we will celebrate our tenth anniversary, and at the same time should 
celebrate the tweny-fifth anniversary of Silver Bay. Let us hit a hard 
blow ! 

The reason the Conferences here have grown better year by year is 
partly because we have made much of the discussional. We grasped 
a great theme this afternoon: and I think that this Conference is greater 
than any before, not only in its significant opening with an address by 
a woman, but because we had a vital theme presented in a masterful way. 

SETH L. Busu, Crocker-McElwain Company, Holyoke, Mass. : I would 
like to ask Mrs. Gilbreth what the poor struggling small companies can 
do in the way of psychological tests, when we hire perhaps three em- 
ployes a month? Must someone in our company become expert? 

Mrs. LILLIAN GILBRETH: Preliminary work can be done by any 
organization no matter how small—and small companies can profitably 
combine to hire a psychologist, each using part time. 

D. F. Garvanp, National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio: I 
would like to ask Mrs. Gilbreth how soon the survey will be completed 
and where we will get the information. 

Also, will you be kind enough to go more fully into the attitude of 
Europe on the question of work as contrasted with America, and how 
it may affect the class system? 

Mrs. LILLIAN GILBRETH: The European survey to which I referred 


14 


has been made under the direction of the Twentieth Century Fund, and 
has been completed by a member of the International Labor Office. The 
American Survey is, I think, being undertaken under the direction of 
the Taylor Society. The European survey is completed and is the prop- 
erty of the Twentieth Century Foundation, and I think we may expect 
that printed and in our hands very soon. I don’t know how quickly 
the American survey will be available. 


The European attitude toward work, or the change in that attitude, 
is indicated by the feeling of many of the Russian and other nobility 
who have been “reduced” or “elevated’”’ to work, as the case may be, by 
new conditions: and, if we can trust the articles that come out, they are 
finding work very interesting. The English people of rank and of all 
types have gone into work. That may ultimately have a great effect 
upon class. In talking with factory workers in England, Switzerland, 
Germany, and Holland, I noticed a growing feeling that work was very 
desirable, that people really almost thanked the War for the fact that 
they. were all forced to increase production. The only thing they com- 
plain about is the lack of markets. Talk about work being undesirable 
is dying away. What that is going to do to class is that it is going to 
raise everybody who works in his own estimation. With these two 
effects and this feeling of likeness and our getting more and more each 
other’s viewpoint, the whole class question will eventually work itself out. 


C. F. Dietz, Bridgeport Brass Company, Bridgeport, Conn.: To have 
known Frank Gilbreth was an inspiration, and to know Mrs. Gilbreth 
is an honor. The engineering profession is one of the last that has suf- 
ferred the incursion of women scientists. But when such women as 
Mrs. Gilbreth come into the engineering profession we are happy to 
“suffer.” I would like to ask Mrs. Gilbreth whether the new economic 
thought is really quite new, or is it a better appreciation on the part of 
industrialists of well known old economic facts? Are we not now better 
able to interpret economic law with respect to the human factor in our 
industries than we were a few years ago? A great deal of our industrial 
dsfficulty, so often expressed in terms of turnover and lack of sattsfac- 
tion, 1s possibly directly due to our rather indifferent attitude toward 
the individual from the standpoint of having him understand what his 
particular function in industry is. At the beginning of employment, in 
addition to making these newer tests and analyses you speak of, if we 
could and would actually undertake to express the purely human side 
of our attitude toward these individuals and get them into the atmos- 
phere of our institution so that they become a part of us, wouldn’t we 
go a long way toward bettering the situation and bringing about a state 
of satisfaction? 


15 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Mrs, LitLian GILBRETH: I think we agree that the so-called newer 
economics is a more general realization of what a few of the pioneers 
felt were the underlying laws. What I meant to say was that too often 
economics was learned as a science more or less theoretically, and that 
the person when coming to apply it lost the connection. Nowadays we 
feel that we have to study it as we do law and management by the case 
system, by taking up these relations as they arise in industry and 
formulating the laws as they cover the situations. 

P. WHITWELL Witson, New York, N. Y.: Has the new application 
of psychology to industry, planning out precisely what the worker is 
fitted for, affected British industry to any extent? 

Mrs. Lirt1an GitprerH: There are two bodies interested in this 
sort of thing in England. One is the Institute of Industrial Psychology 
which is undertaking psychological tests and motion and time study. 
They are going about the thing in a very careful manner, putting their 
psychologists into individual plants, for three to five years if necessary. 
As far as psychological tests are concerned they are doing an excellent 
job and like the Roundtrees and others are making real progress in this 
field. 

As far as motion and time study is concerned, they are making the 
beginnings and getting the background. The movement is growing, and 
people seem to feel that the effect is to raise the worker in his own 
estimation. 

The other body is the Fatigue Board. Investigations in every plant 
are reported to this board, and probably ay, of you have seen the 
publications. 

O. A. PuHevres, Fuller Brush Company, Hartford, Conn.: Mrs. Gil- 
breth spoke about physical examinations. There are a certain number - 
of applicants, apparently desirable, but always rejected by the physician. 
Is there any constructive program applied to these willing applicants, 
who are rejected because of physical disability for the jobs they apply 
for? 

Mrs. LILLIAN GILBRETH: I think industry is increasingly realizing 
its responsibility toward not only this type but those who have been in 
industry and who have become superannuated or handicapped for one 
reason or another. The Taylor Society and other groups have sent out 
questionnaires asking various industries what they do in these cases, 
and what they propose. I presume in time, if enough of us take the 
thing up, and if we begin to realize that there is a job somewhere for 
everyone no matter how handicapped he may be, that we can handle 
it; but I think it 1s going to take a long time to do that. | 

SetH L. Busu: Might I ask, Mrs. Gilbreth, whether you mean only 


16 


examinations when the applicant is hired, or do you refer to the value 
also of physical examinations at stated intervals? 

Mrs, LILLIAN GILBRETH: I should include stated examinations of all 
kinds. The physical examination periodically is absolutely necessary. 
As for such things as tests, so often an applicant is nervous and un- 
adjusted and doesn’t do himself justice that all those things have to be 
done periodically. | 

Cuas. R. Towson: You all know of the Industrial Congress about to be 
held in connection with the Sesqui-Centennial in Philadelphia and I would 
be glad if Mr. Trigg, its chairman, would take the remaining moments 
_to conclude this discussion. 


ERNEsT T. Tricc, John Lucas and Company, Philadelphia, Pa.: This 
is my first experience at one of these conferences, and I feel that already 
I have gained much from the few hours I have had here with you. The 
spirst of this sort of meeting is very remarkable. It is simply wonderful 
and I cannot help but feel, as I look over this gathering, that you are 
exercising a steadying hand through such meetings as thts on the indus- 
trial welfare of our whole country. 


Reports of The Five Sectional Conferences 
I. “Pensions and Annuities.” 


C. S. CHING, Supervisor of Industrial Relations, U. S. Rubber Com- 
pany, leader. Report made by Bennett F. Schauffler, Employment 
Manager, Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company, Philadelphia, Pa. 


As to definition, the consensus of opinion seemed to be that a pension 
was “a recognition by annuities to superannuated employes of the general 
public feeling that a company should look after its men.” 

Representatives of the older and larger companies said that recent ac- 
tuarial surveys have indicated such staggering costs for any definitely 
organized plan on a liberal basis, that it has been necessary in some cases 
to curtail the amount of payments. 

No agreement was reached as to the desirability of establishing a defi- 
nite age or period of service determining retirement. The general 
practice seemed to be to leave discretion in the hands of a committee. 
On some such committees employe representatives exercise a vote. 

Consensus of opinion favored the formal plan rather than the in- 
formal action, since a company could profit by its investment through 
good will from the public and its employes in case of a definitely estab- 
lished plan, whereas an absence of policy would not afford such 
advantage. 

17 


Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Although the informal arrangement might seem to have the advan- 
tage of not committing the company, its discontinuance, resulting in 
pauperism for old employes, would probably have almost as unfavor- 
able a reaction as the termination of a regular plan. Moreover practic- © 
ally all well-established schemes have a provision for termination at the 
discretion of trustees. 

Emphasis was placed upon the desirability of a formal pension plan 
as an encouragement to payroll relief by providing for employes who 
would otherwise be maintained in the plant at a definite loss or con- 
siderable hazard to the company. 

The comparative merits of ‘‘contributory” and non-contributory” plans 
were discussed with a preponderance of opinion favoring the type of 
plan which involves some contribution by the employe. 

A proposal to purchase annuities from an insurance company was 
submitted for discussion and questioned on the grounds of tying up 
stockholders’ money at a very low rate of interest compared with that 
which it would command if invested in other ways. 

State pensions were mentioned as a probable development in the near 
future. In case of their adoption, industry might be called upon to 
help bear the tax burden involved in addition to the load of existing pen- 
sion plans. 


Since practically all formal pension plans now operative in industry 
have a provision for rearrangement by the trustee, necessary steps 
can be taken to adapt them to the situation if or when state pen- 
sions become effective. 


II. “Employe Stock Ownership.” 


SETH L. BusHu, Manager, Research Department, Crocker-McElwain _ 
Company, leader. | 
It was agreed that every employe stock ownership plan should have 
as its chief objective, the various interests of the employe—financial and 
otherwise. 7 
Emphasis was placed upon the need for stability in the employe’s 
investment—a consideration that would bar from stock ownership plans 
many corporations which have not yet come to the time when the invest- 
ment in their stock would be stable. 


There seemed to ‘be ‘a general opinion in our group that, even 
though the investment is very sound, it is rather a questionable practice 
to stimulate sales by anything resembling a stock promotion proposition. 
The preferable way, it was agreed, was to make the acquisition of stock 
by employes possible in some entirely voluntary way. 

Looking at the subject from the standpoint of management, it was 


18 


felt that a company’s motives for selling stock to employes should al- 
ways be fair and above-board. 

A statement was made during the discussion to the effect that certain 
corporations have floated stock issues for their employes simply for the 
purpose of disposing of the stock in an easy manner, without the nec- 
essity for paying a broker’s fee. We agreed that such an attitude of 
mind on the part of management should be condemned. 

In spite of a few unfortunate cases of the above nature, it was the 
general opinion that most companies really have a worthy objective in 
selling stock to their employes.’ Most of them are seeking to build up 
an efficient loyal working force by giving the employes a chance’to have 
a financial interest in the business. 

It was concluded that any company approaching the matter from the 
above standpoint, should not expect any definite returns at first, except 
possibly those that might accrue from interesting the employes in a 
real thrift proposition. Larger benefits, such as increased loyalty and 
a keener interest on the part of the employes in the success of the busi- 
ness, would probably come at some later time when the employes realized 
the larger purpose of stock ownership. 


III. “Making the Best Use of the Present Labor Supply.” 


T. G. Spates, Assistant to President, Richard Hellmann, Incorp- 
orated, leader. Report made by R. B. Wolf, Wolf and Hill, Con- 
sulting Engineers, New York, N. Y. 

The subject of this sectional conference was defined by Chairman 
Spates as making more effective use of human energy. He pointed out 
that the present situation, because of the shutting off of the large influx 
of labor from Europe, makes it essential that manufacturers learn to inten- 
sify workers’ interest in the work itself, by providing conditions which 
stimulate thinking and, therefore, afford opportunity for the workmen 
to contribute in a creative way toward improvements in production pro- 
cesses. 

Mr. Spates laid down for discussion the following principles: 

One, that industry wants greater production in less time at minimum 
cost. 

Two, the factors to be considered are money, machinery, materials, 
markets and men. 

Three, that the coordinating factor is management, and that the job 
of management is to develop the three-fold nature of man, as symbolized 
by the Y M CA triangle, of body, mind, and spirit. 

It was brought out that greater productivity in America as compared 
with European countries is due to a number of causes, such as: 


19 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


The larger amount of mechanical power available per worker. 


Greater cooperation between management and men because of less 
class distinetion. 


Freer exchange of ideas. 
Greater emphasis upon education and training. 


At the close of the discussion, the Chairman summarized the outstand- 
ing points as follows: 


One, that it is essential to obtain facts regarding productive activity. 


Two, that it is vital that local conference methods be employed for 
the interpretation of facts, thereby developing group activity. 


Three, that policies should be determined after conference and careful 
consideration of the facts. 


Four, that accumulative records of accomplishment as to progress in - 
carrying out policies are essential in order to sustain interest. 


Five, that compensation to individuals should be in accordance with 
accomplishment, and that this should be not only in the form of mone- 
tary reward, but also in furnishing able men with an apportunity to 
accumulate greater knowledge, increased skill, and creative power. 


The last point of Mr. Spates’ summary, taken in connection with the 
last point of his introductory principles brought about a discussion of 
the three-fold nature of man, and the necessity for consciously develop- 
ing conditions in our industrial life which will satisfy this three-fold 
nature. 


The physical needs must be cared for. 


The emotional nature, which has to do largely with the development 
of skill and craftsmanship, should be given full play, in order to get real . 
joy into the day’s work. 


The intellectual nature must be stimulated through the development of 
means for measuring each individual worker’s accomplishment. 


It was pointed out that,if the proper environment were provided for 
unifying the physical, emotional, and mental natures of man, these na- 
tures would emerge into a strong spiritual personality, the development 
of which should be the main aim and object of industry. 


It was also pointed out that quantity records stimulate the physical, 
quality records the emotional, and cost records the mental faculties; the 
main purpose of management being to create conditions within industry 
which make possible the development of individual responsibility for 
increasing quantity of output, improving quality, and lowering costs of 
production; the results being not only increasing prosperity for the in- 
dustry, but also lower costs and better service to the customer. 


20 


IV. “Training for Leadership.” 


Professor N. C. Mixer, Director, Industrial Extension Division, 
Rutgers University, leader. 

Training for leadership is one of the things foremost in the minds 
of industrial officials today. It is one of our most serious problems and 
the only reason why we are not doing more training for leadership is 
because we frankly admit that we don’t know what to do nor how to 
do it. We concluded in our conference that the preliminary work in 
training for leadership might be undertaken in our apprentice school. 
In recent times, whether we realize it or not, we have looked to 
apprentice schools for minor executives. We hope that the boys will 
develop into foremen and. supervisors. Some of us are introducing 
courses in economics, others are including human relations in their ap- 
prentice program. Others are engaging speakers from outside to exert 
a broadening influence upon the apprentice boy, because they realize that 
all of this tends toward better leadership. 

Apparently the school system, the whole social system, in this country, 
is being rapidly developed in a way which takes leadership away from 
industry. As soon as a boy shows talent for leadership we tend to steer 
him into a profession. 

The next aspect of the subject pertains to the assimilation of technical 
college men by bringing in a certain percentage of graduates and giving 
them the proper kind of training. 

Foreman training to be successful hinges upon three main issues: 
first, competent leadership—and I am a sincere believer that leadership 
comes before all else in foreman training; second, a logical and con- 
structive program; third, a comprehensive plan. Pure foreman training 
can best be handled within the factory, dealing quite largely with local 
conditions and practices. On the other hand, if one is thinking of giving 
considerable inspirational help, and planning a social group to foster better 
spirit among: foremen, then one might better organize a foremen’s club 
with representatives from various companies throughout the community. 

Half of the companies engaged in manufacturing on a rather broad 
scale, are vitally interested in the foreman problem—they want to under- 
take leadership training, they are uncertain how to proceed, and very 
frequently when they start something they make very serious mistakes. 
If one wants a chemical problem analyzed he does not look around to 
see which foreman or superintendent can analyze it. He calls in an 
expert chemist. But when some companies undertake to solve the fore- 
man training problem they select someone in a haphazard way and say, 
“You do this,’ and he probably has had no background, no educational 
experience, nothing which would make him competent as a student or 


21 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


as a leader in foremanship affairs. Unless you are absolutely sure of 
what you are doing in that important field of factory endeavor, get some- 
one who knows something about it to come in, spend an hour or two 
with you, and help you straighten it out from the beginning, so you will 
avoid some of the terrible mistakes which have been made in the past. 


V. Railroad Group. 


Roy V. Wricut, Editor, Railway Age, leader. Report made by 
J. C. Clark, Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., New York, N. Y. 

In his opening remarks the leader asked the question “Why are rail- 
road men coming to the conference?’ The general answer was “To get 
a better understanding between the executive and the employe.” Methods 
of foreman training used on the different railroads, and the various tynes 
of leadership were discussed. 

Suggestion systems which provide awards to those employes who make 
valuable suggestions were dealt with. In this connection it was the con- 
sensus of opinion that employes desire recognition rather than financial 
reward. 

The afternoon’s discussion might be summed up as follows: 

1. That foremen’s clubs or classes are a valuable aid in promoting 
understanding and cooperation between management and employes. 

2. That meetings of officers and employes would probably show best 
results if a series of connected talks or lectures covering a period of 
several months could be arranged in advance. 

3. That opportunity for discussion should be offered at every meeting. 

4. That suggestion plans have a definite value through recognition 
of individual employes. 

5. The active interest and cooperation of all divisional and general 
officers 1s essential to success in work of this kind. 

The railroad group was so interested that it met again and unanimous- 
ly adopted the following resolution: 

“Whereas the railroad group attending the Conference a Silver Bay, 
August, 1926, has received a great deal of benefit and acquired a broader 
vision from the interchange of ideas and the presentation of up-to-date 
information on the human relations problem, 

Be tt resolved: That this group urge the general committee to provide 
a larger part in next year’s program to human relations problems peculiar 
to the railroad industry and be it further 

Resolved: That railroad officers be urged to support next year’s con- 
ference by their presence and participation in discussion.” 


22 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PAYROLL 
Joe Mitchell Chapple 


Editor, National Magazine, Boston. 


The basis of all right human relations is the pay- 
roll. I know it is sometimes popular to sneer at 
so mundane and material a thing, but the genius of 
the age is business and the genius of business is the 
payroll. Like everything else in life, the payroll 1s 
subject to constant and intermittent changes, not only 
as to figures, but in its general aspect. The time was 
when a payroll was almost a family relation; the 
employer looked upon his apprentices as sons and daughters; he lived 
with his people; their joys and sorrows were his joys and sorrows. 
There may have been some distinction in social caste, but it was scarcely 
discernible. The time was when the hired man ate with the family, 
even if he did sleep in the attic, and it was no disgrace for the farmer’s 
son to marry the hired girl. But as things go now “The Philosophy of 
the Payroll” approaches a status of quid pro quo. 

As factories grew in size some employers sought to renew personal 
contacts by an autocratic type of “welfare work.” Much of this didn’t 
work, because a thing so tagged has been said to be “the farewell of 
amicable relations.” And it was human to forget gratitude, which con- 
tinues to be somewhat of an imaginary virtue, even today. There are 
many radicals who become cynical as to the future of payroll relations, 
but the age-old theory of syndicalism has had a black eye in the experi- 
ment with Bolshevism. 

There is more to the man who creates and pays a payroll than may 
appear down the line. He has been thinking and studying and toiling 
while others sleep. His job is not limited by an eight-hour day; his 
work is a continuous performance. The trouble with the labor world 
today is the inequitable distribution indicated by many payrolls. Yet 
in my judgment no persons in the country deserve the heroes’ laurels 
more than those who have paid payrolls. They will never be fully 
appreciated, but they have made two blades of grass grow where one 
grew before, and have through their efforts built churches, homes, and 
schools, and have been the initiative productive power of this country. 

I recently asked the editor of one of our finest newspapers: “What 
is the greatest thing in your life in the building of your great news- 
paper?” And he said: “The responsibility of a payroll!’ When any 
man stands up and says that he is the sole master, and does not recog- 
nize the responsibilities of a payroll, he is past hope; for in these days, 


23 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


we have service to render. We are on the payroll of life, not only six 
but seven days a week. 

The payroll is a magical elsxir which for ages has stvmulated the 
hope of saving and assured the future of millions, free from want. 
The accumulated savings tn the United States that have come directly 
from payrolls constitute the great financial strength of the country to- 
day, but nothing is said of the millions and billions that. have been lost, 
and the hundreds of thousands of men who have gone down in the > 
swirl and maelstrom of trying to keep a payroll going. In my judg- 
ment there is no class of people who have had on the whole more out 
of modern life than the working people—they have had their money. 
That is more than can be said of a large percentage of the men who 
have failed trying to pay payrolls! And who has ever heard of the 
persons on the payroll becoming responsible for all the mistakes they 
make ? 

There is no worry in the world like that of a financial worry. A man 
paying a payroll knows that families are depending on that money. But 
he also realizes that when he buys a pound of sugar he will get 
a pound of sugar, but when he buys labor he does not know whether 
he will get his money’s worth or not, as it depends entirely upon the 
conscientious service rendered. 

The gaunt spectre that confronts us all is old age and want. What 
more tragic thing than the old employe when he receives his blue en- 
velope? He cannot keep up the pace of the payroll; others are coming 
on to push him out; they are ambitious to get theirs. Some of the 
cruelties in the labor world today are inevitable. The old bosses want 
to keep the old men, but they know they cannot go on unless they have 
younger and more vigorous help. 

Imagine a country of one hundred and twenty millions of people 
which can enjoy long periods when every man and woman who wants 
work can apply for it, a country where there isn’t a child in poverty 
and where education is an inherent right. Such ideal conditions would 
obtain all over this country, if there were a satisfactory adjustment so 
that the surplus of labor in some places could be transported to other 
places where it is needed. 

The great problem of all time has been the problem of distribution. 
As we increasingly understand the distribution of wealth, the opportuni- 
ties and advantages, comforts and privileges of life, we approach the 
ideals that live in the heart of every right-minded individual. There is 
no desire to see distress or suffering, but there is that law of self- 
preservation and the protection of the family, which sometimes leads to 
cruelties and injustice, and which is made the occasion of labor dis- 
turbances and social unrest in the world. 


24 


The Philosophy of the Payroll, after all, is the philosophy of life, 
and when the workers and employers of the world are guided by the 
angels of their better nature, then payrolls will no longer become that 
ghostly spectre that is associated with old father Time with his scythe 
searching for new fields to conquer. Sunshine, prosperity, peace, and 
contentment are coming when payrolls become honor rolls, and when 
pay envelopes contatn a just and equitable distribution of profits which 
have come from labor honestly given and benefits worthily bestowed. 

As I faced death recently in an aeroplane, and as I talked with the 
boys overseas several years before and saw them there on the battle- 
field, with their faces turned to the stars (and over them seemed to 
hang the halo of Calvary) I thought, what have I done? What does 
it matter whether I live five or ten years longer? But it does matter 
how I live and how I die. That is the thing that came to me—how 
little I had in the Bank of Credit over yonder. How little had I done 
for others! If we could only get out of the world this green-eyed 
selfishness, this envy, this thing that goes out and grasps and grasps, 
forgetting that we cannot receive without the open hand of giving! 

We are all on the payroll of Life—the payroll of the great Creator, 


who gives us food, raiment, and happiness. Are we rendering full 
service ? 


Auditorium Tower and New Wing of Hotel 


25 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


SOME OF THE TAP ROOTS 
OF HUMAN RELATIONS IN INDUSTRY 


Ernest T. Trigg 


President, John Lucas and Company, Inc., Philadelphia, (also 
Director, United States Chamber of Commerce and Ex- 
President, Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce). 


In the time given me I propose to discuss with you 
some of those underlying factors concerning human 
relations in industry which always escape statistics 
and exact measurement. We know how interesting and 
compelling of our respect clear, exact facts about any 
subject can be. But are there not also some other 
aspects of any subject, no matter how many facts may 
surround it, that will forever escape us if we adjust 
our spectacles too carefully and draw the page too close to our eyes? 

So, let us put aside for a little while the more exact spirit of analysis 
that might be called scientific and take a longer look at this very great 
question of human relations in industry. 

That we may get our ideas adjusted to this way of looking at our sub- 
ject, let me express my gratification with the peculiar fitness of choice 
that brings us together at this beautiful place. I say fitness, because 
it seems easier to recognize divine force in the great forests and beside 
the beautiful lake than it would be if we were hemmed in by city streets. 
He who would consider human relations in industry should first start 
thinking about man’s relation to his Maker. From that relationship 
should flow all others. Two thousand years ago beside another lake, the. 
Sea of Galilee, a certain worker in industry, a simple carpenter, laid down 
the basis truth that are basic to our meeting here; the truth that the way 
to God lies through the hearts of our fellowmen; the truth that he who 
would find himself completely must first lose himself completely ; the truth 
that there is not loss, but gain, in loving our neighbors as ourselves. 

The Carpenter of Galilee showed us the way. How fumblingly, halt- 
ingly and tardily we have followed it for 2,000 years! There 
can be no question, however, that the light of these truths has guided 
us increasingly and that we are today closer to the source of that light 
than ever before. : 

Out of those 2,000 years, a century and a half seems a brief time, 
but the 150 years ending in 1926 encompass the whole life-span of our 
still young nation. The destiny of this youth—America—we can only 
faintly guess. The mists that gather over the endless succession of 


26 


_tomorrows grow deeper by distance, but if our future is obscure to the 
eyes of knowledge it need not be obscure to the eyes of faith. It is by 
that faith that we must steer our course, and consequently I would like 
to mention some of the reasons why we should have faith in our indus- 
trial future. 

First, the mere wording of our subject may be somewhat of a limita- 
tion upon our thinking. “Human Relations in Industry.” Do we not 
come closer to the source of truth if we consider this subject as “Industry 
in Human Relations?’ Is not life itself bigger than labor, whether we 
perform that labor with our hands or our heads? If we are to get 
at the root of human relationships as they occur within the circum- 
ference of our business life, should we not set ourselves the viewpoint 
that industry 1s not alone a way to make a living—but a way to make 
a life? If we can start from that point, some other things will begin 
to fall into their rightful places. We can begin to see the significance 
of another one of those two thousand-year-old truths, that “Man does 
not live by bread alone.” 

In this spirit let us take a backward look at this century and a half 
of American living—living by business and in business. Out of such 
an analysis several forces become evident in their effect upon us as in- 
dividuals and in their formative impress upon American industry as a 
whole. 

The first of these major influences was political. The courageous 
men who founded our nation broke with the past and fixed for our 
country its own ideals and objectives. These have had a profound effect 
upon our business life. In them was cast the mould for a government 
and a social and business structure in which the individual had equal 
rights before the law, and freedom within the law to develop to the 
utmost his inventive, creative ability. As a result, for 150 years, Ameri- 
can business has been characterized by daring freedom. Even through 
our darkest periods of industrial strife, from the presidents of our com- 
panies to our workmen at the bench, we have felt the urge to fit into 
every process of industry new thoughts and new methods. We have 
ruthlessly forsaken the old to achieve the better new. The spirit of the 
men who founded our government has been exactly the spirit in which 
American industry has attacked and overcome its problems. Our fore- 
fathers were political pioneers and that same pioneering spirit has been 
the dominant characteristic of American industry since its inception. It 
is this spirit of individual freedom and pioneer daring which is bringing 
as great an advance in human relations as it has brought in the develop- 
ment of our mechanical resources. 

The second great force influencing progress in the last century and 
a half was the expansion of our people to occupy the land. From the 


27 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


narrow fringe of English settlements along the Atlantic seaboard in the 
middle seventeen hundreds, wave after wave of immigration threaded 
its way through almost impenetrable forests, over the mountains and 
down the streams, pushing before it the American frontier; until at last 
that frontier no longer existed, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific our 
land was one. 

But these great waves of immigration consumed the energies and 
the life forces of thousands of our people. In the main their struggle 
was with nature. There was something austerely primitive about those 
days of the flatboat, the pack horse, and the covered wagon. Men and 
women of that period blazed a trail for the expansion of business. It 
was their destiny in the scheme of things to occupy the land and hold 
it until commerce slowly developed rude settlements into prosperous 
cities. The termination of that period came within the lifetime of some 
of us who are of middle age. The heritage we have received from those 
men and women is an integral part of American industry. There can 
be no question but that, generation after generation, their lives piled up 
a legacy of courage. Their way of life developed a deep and abiding 
sense of personal liberty that was in itself a continuation of the spirit 
that led their fathers to write our Declaration of Independence. With 
such a heritage how can we expect to achieve industrial peace and har- 
mony except through mutual accord? .The application of external force 
by court or government can never be a final solution, when Capital and 
Labor, so-called, are jointly the heirs of these American qualities. 

When we come to the third fundamental influence affecting American 
business life it seems to me that it too grew logically from the period 
before it. Those early pioneers were lured to their westward journeys 
by a hunger for land, and the romance of the far horizon. But some 
of them discovered more than land and found more than great adventure. . 
Opened, chapter by chapter, what a great and fascinating story is found 
in the record of discovery and development of our country’s natural 
resources. Discovered, one by one, utilized, and applied, they have 
come tumbling out of the horn of plenty in a diversified wealth, stagger- 
ing to the imagination. Iron, oil, coal, gas, copper, lumber, water power 
—these are but a few and then, of course, underlying all, the marvelous 
fertility of our soil, unparallelled by that of any country in the world. 
We found that we were a Midas amongst nations and that in our raw 
materials we had the secret of the “golden touch.” In this third great 
influence moulding human relations we find again a force that is peculiar 
to our country. And it is this wealth which has determined that we shall 
be an industrial, manufacturing nation. 

I think we were rather drunk with a sense of power when we began 
to discover the new riches of our raw materials. You, who have read 


28 


the history of the early exploitation of our natural resources, know that 
that record is shot through and through with ruthless selfishness. It 
developed a type of man as leader who was brutal in his grasp for pos- 
session. But that very selfishness often defeated its own end in wasteful 
competition. The attitude of the period was characterized by a phrase 
—‘The public be damned.” It took a generation for the first light of 
truth to dawn, that the public would always and inevitably have its 
own word to say about being consigned to perdition. Quite a while ago 
we crossed over into a period in which it was seen, that if, for no other 
reason than enlightened selfishness, that slogan must be changed into— 
“The public be served.” 


The discovery and exploitation of our natural resources has brought 
us inevitably into a fourth cycle of business life, the underlying force 
of which most strongly characterizes American industry as we know it 
today and as it will probably be for generations. The great wealth ot 
our raw materials was in itself a goad to inventive genius to find ways 
and means of possessing that wealth more quickly. Men found that 
their own puny strength was not sufficient—that old methods would not 
do, if we were quickly to turn all this new raw material into industrial 
wealth. And so began that fascinating march of mechanical invention 
that more than anything else distinguishes American business from that 
of any other nation. Crudely, awkwardly at first, these inventions came 
into being; at first unrelated in their effectiveness, and some of them 
having to fight step by step against popular prejudice. But each decade 
has seen the magic fabric of machines unfold, has seen the gaps filled 
in and effectiveness multiplied. Transportation, communication, factory 
processes, the farm, the mine, the home—all are becoming mechanized 
with the products of American inventive genius. One hundred and fifty 
years ago we regarded the few machines we had as scarcely more than 
interesting toys. Men’s arms and backs did the work of the world. Our 
thought about machines has undergone some very interesting changes in 
this last century and a half. But the growth of the machine was not 
accepted by all of us with the same meaning. Many believed that labor 
must organize to protect itself against what was felt to be the inevitable 
degradation of the mechanical age. And there can be no doubt that the 
machine did indeed represent to many employers a means for the ex- 
ploitation of labor. There is still a lingering distrust of too great 
mechanizaton of industry. Some of us still regard the machine as an 
insensate monster we have created and fear that this monster without 
a soul will become our grinding master. But we are beginning to see 
that the machine need be neither our master nor our slave, that it need 
work no more profitably for employer than for the employed and that its 


29 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


presence in the partnership of business means a new freedom for labor, 
a greater security for capital, a great efficiency for management, and 
a larger service for the public. 


There I believe you have the four most significant forces growing out 
of 150 years of national history. The first two would seem to be more 
spiritual than material. The formulation of our political government 
was in essence a spiritual way of looking at things—a desire to establish 
a nation in which the individual might find his rightful place. The second 
was also chiefly spiritual, in that those generations of pioneering life 
brought out in the American business character a courage in attempting 
the unknown and a fierce spirit of individual liberty which marks out 
very clearly the course of any progress that can be made in our industrial 
relations. The last two that I have enumerated—our great endowment 
of natural resources and our highly mechanized industry—have led to 
mass production on a great scale. 


What are these forces doing to us today? How are they affecting 
the relations of us human beings as we live our lives in industry? J think 
the spirit of our forefathers that expressed itself in the Declaration of 
Independence and the Constitution of the United States is reexpressing 
itself in a new declaration of industrial independence and a new con- 
stitution of American business that is none the less real because as yet 
it has not been fully written. If it has not become a document it is cer- 
tainly becoming more definitely each year the American way of looking 
at human relations in industry. We have spent 150 years in proving to 
ourselves the political soundness of the democratic form of government. 
We have made tremendous mistakes but we have also made tremendous 
progress. Steadily, from the smallest beginnings there has grown up 
a convsction that what is sound in our philosophy of government might 
be applied to our philosophy of industry; that industry, like government, 
is tndeed “of the people, by the people and for the people’; that each 
individual has his right before the law and that the foundation of that 
law is the greatest good of all of us, not the selfish good of a few of us. 


The spiritual courage and some of the idealistic vision of our pioneer 
fathers and mothers are working now as we go about to better our human 
relations, in industry or out of it. Our industrial leaders, yes our cap- 
italists—if you want to call them such, when, for example, the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad has some 250,000 owners—are themselves in most 
instances men who have inherited the pioneer spirit. We are all too 
much imbued with this common spirit for any one division—labor, 
capital, management, or public—ever, or for very long to be “high-hat” 
in its attitude towards the rest of us. For most of us the question about 
the standing of any individual easily comes down to this: Can this man 


30 


get his job done better than the other fellow? Can he play his part and 
then do a little more that contributes to the good of all. If he can, he 
grows bigger, and, obeying the law of gravity, the little men sift down 
and the big ones are left on top. But in that process we are insisting 
that it be an actual growth in size for the individual and that the measure 
of that growth shall be an increase of public service not an increase in 
ability to grab for self. As a general rule, I don’t believe that we are 
envious of the fellow who goes up in business. I think most men are 
quite too busy getting on. In that process we are setting up as a work- 
ing ideal the belief that leadership is justified only by good workmanship 
and good service. And, if these qualities are present, we do not be- 
grudge the material rewards to any man. 


We are discovering that you cannot draw lines through our 110,000,000 
people and say these are labor, these are management, these are owners, 
and these are consumers. We all labor, if we are worth our salt. An 
evolution has taken place that is dramatic in its significance; the man 
at the bench has become part owner of the company for which he works 
and possibly of other businesses as well. As capitalist, workman, or 
manager, we are all consumers. With this recognition has come a view- 
point which grows clearer day by day. That unless dollars are taken 
out of the industry by labor, industry cannot take dollars from labor 
for goods. That if managers or owners of business want the whole 
range of the consumers’ needs and desires to become effective in pur- 
chases, they must see that consumers, or at least those consumers on 
their payroll, can secure the money with which to make these purchases. 
That may sound like cold business, but it is something more than that. 
It is good living. And it is something more than that; it is the founda- 
tion of a good life. We are already past thinking of a living wage. All 
of us in industry are actually accomplishing the impossible. We are lift- 
ing ourselves by our own boot-straps into a totally new level of economic 
life. There has never been before in any country so great a distribution 
of wealth, there has never been so great an ability on the part of millions 
not only to possess the necessities of life and many of its luxuries but 
also a margin for savings which insures a protected old age. 


We are developing out of the raw resources of our country new levels 
of wealth. This development is not being carried on in the spirit of 
exploitation. We are putting science and careful management into ser- 
vice. As these new levels of wealth are opened up, I believe we can 
count upon the new spirit to insure that this new wealth is distributed 
more and more evenly; and this will mean a better life for each of us. 
And, lastly, I think this new partnership with the machine, to which I 
have referred, is bringing and will bring into our human relations a 


31 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


new factor in economics which will at the same time be a new factor in 
sociology. 

That great industrial genius Steinmetz once said that we should not 
too greatly pride ourselves upon the progress we have made in civiliza- 
tion; that we could take pride in our progress only as it was found un- 
necessary for any of us to work primarily for an existence. That re- 
mark was made a number of years ago but I am quite sure that before 
his death Mr. Steinmetz must have felt that American industry had 
progressed a long way toward that point. In that direction lies another 
of our sources of faith in the future of human relations in industry. 

Trotsky, the Soviet leader, was recently quoted as saying that the 
American workingman could never be Bolshevized, because too many 
American workmen were owners of the business in which they worked, 
and that every American workingman was at heart a slave owner because 
of the machines he had working for him. I do not dread this great age 
of machinery in which we will live out our lives. The machine of itself 
has no spirit. It can never be vindictive nor malignant, except as we 
put that spirit out of ourselves and into it. As human beings who think 
and feel right towards one another, we will find that machines become, 
as I have said, only our willing partners in these good works. 

[ have spoken more about the causes of faith than anything else, 
because I feel that it 1s only out of ourselves that any sound and 
abiding answer can come. ‘That answer about human relations in indus- 
try and industry in human relations will only be arrived at as we exer- 
cise that faith, courage, and vision which is the natural inheritance of 


Americans. 
Discussion of Mr. Trigg’s Address. 


HARRINGTON EMERSON, Efficiency Counselor, New York City: I 
would like to ask Mr. Trigg what he thinks is the chief inspiration of 
American industry. 

Ernest T. TricG: The chief inspiration of American industry in my 
opinion is our form of government —the philosophy of government 
under which we live and have our being, the opportunity it gives to the 
individual for initiative and suitable rewards. 

HARRINGTON EMERSON: What would you consider the chief char- 
acteristic of sound industral conditions? 

(Members of the Conference mentioned cooperation, the square deal, 
confidence, prosperity, contentment, human development, universal op- 
portunity, social justice, ete.) 

ERNEsT IT. Tr1aG: I should say that satisfied workmen, with sufficient 
income to live happily and bring up their families properly, and mills 
actively engaged, Peary speaking, 365 days in the year, with plenty 


of sales turnover. 
32 


M. J. Sticker, Y M CA, Long Island City, N. Y.: I would like to 
ask Mr. Trigg what he means by democracy in industry ? 

ERNEST T. TricG: We have found wonderful success through our 
philosophy of government which provides unlimited opportunity for the 
man or the woman who is ambitious and who desires to progress. That 
same philosophy if applied to industry would be equally good for it, by 
making available full opportunity to men and women who are ambi- 
tious. In other words, let them understand that if they are willing to 
pay the price of success they can have success. 


Howarp WILLIAMS, Business Training Corporation, New York, N. Y.: 
I would like to add a word regarding the industrial development in the 
United States. Mr. Trigg made the statement that we should have 
industrial democracy in order to have contented and happy people. It 
seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that we have to go a little further than 
that. What is the ultimate goal of an industrial democracy unless it 
be the building of a civilization in which we can later develop a cultured 
people? Bertrand Russell says that the whole purpose of industrial train- 
ing and development of men in mills, factories, sweat shops, and rail- 
roads, is to build individuals and give them the opportunity to live a 
creative life. Ninety-five per cent of our people are living purely on 
the material or physical plane of life—getting and spending, acquir- 
ing material things. The whole purpose of civilization is not merely 
contentment, but the opportunity to develop men of complete individual 
creative freedom. While 95 per cent are merely laboring, a small 5 per 
cent are engaged in the creative activities of the world—the engineers, 
poets, dreamers and builders. To develop such creative people should 
be the ultimate goal of all industrial democracy. 

Sele ULLIs, Y i Ae Passaic, N< |.: I would like’to ask what are 
some of the larger factors preventing proper human relations in industry ? 


Ernest T. Tricc: I think the principal factor (and I am only going 
to state one because all the rest are collateral to it) is a lack of appre- 
ciation on the part of the employer of the employe’s needs and ambi- 
tions, and a lack of appreciation on the part of the employe of the 
employer’s side. We have got to get closer together. I think there 
must be more education, and out of that education will come a greater 
degree of cooperation. It is my belief that there is more responsibility 
for lack of cooperation today falling upon the shoulders of the employer 
than upon the employe; because after all, the employer is the one who 
should have the bigger vision, he is the one who should be thinking in 
terms of the welfare and contentment of his employes, if only selfishly 
from the standpoint of his own business succes; and when he fails to 
cooperate, responsibility must be assumed very largely by him. 


33 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


AN EXPERIENCE 
» WITH EMPLOYE REPRESENTATION 


Harvey G. Ellerd 
Personnel Department, Armour and Company, Chicago. 


Throughout the ages, progress of every kind has 
been accompanied by strife. Apparently we humans 
never learn what is best for us, until we have quar- 
reled and at times indulged in a regular “knock down 
and drag out.” We like to think we are reasonable . 
and tolerant, but in truth we are by nature very 
pugnacious and our inclination is to fight things out 
se rather than reason them out. 

SAA Rainer were in the saddle in the early days of the in-_ 
dustrial age, which was ushered in only a few generations ago. Those 
who organized and ‘developed business enterprises were more or less in- 
tolerant. Their success proved their ability and judgment, and they 
felt quite sure of their ground. It was not easy for them to concede 
that their employes might have views with reference to their conditions 
of work which were highly important and worth considering, and, on 
the other hand, the employes were more or less imbued with the belief 
that their employers had no interest other than their selfish interest. 

That was a day in which the supposed antagonism between capital and 
labor was accepted as gospel. The terms may have been new, but the 
antagonism was as old as the human race. In its previous forms it 
existed between the free-born and the slaves, patricians and people of 
lowly birth, high caste and low caste, master and man, classes and masses. 
Nearly all of the forward steps of civilization have followed the conflict 
between these hereditary foes—and nearly every step forward has been 
a compromise, which might have been worked out in advance, but which 
under the existing order of things would not have proved acceptable to 
either side until both sides had struggled to a point where a compromise 
was essential. 


In the comparatively short time since the inception of the industrial 
age, there have been-some mighty conflicts. Usually the issues were 
befogged but the respective positions were clear cut, and nearly always 
they could be summed up as “you will” and “I won't.” The issues 
themselves were seldom put under the lens and dissected, so as to deter- 
mine which: were the vital parts and which were not. The accepted 
practice of the day was “take it or leave it,’ and reasoning was not 
indulged in while physical strength could prevail. Might usually made 


34 


right, and each group girded itself to maximum strength, always await- 
ing the right moment to use this strength to its advantage or in retalia- 
tion for some previous disadvantage or loss. That the converse could 
be brought about was doubted, and it is, therefore, not difficult to under- 
stand why there should be widespread interest in the plan which has 
produced industrial peace in the meat-packing industry for several years 
past and which promises to maintain peace in the years to come. 


The meat-packing industry is an important link between the nation’s 
producers and consumers. It serves them both and is the chief medium 
through which the divergent views of farmers and city people are 
brought into focus. The farmer, as might be expected, wants the 
highest possible prices for his products, while the consumer, on the 
other hand, just as naturally wants to buy things as cheaply as possible. 
The meat packer occupies an unenviable position between, and is in effect 
a medium through which a compromise is reached. Seldom, indeed, is 
an arbiter popular, and I must admit that the business which I represent 
has had more than its share of undeserved unpopularity. 


If time permitted, I should like to discuss that fact further and show 
that a lack of understanding of the function of the meat packer and 
of the manner in which he operates was responsible for most of the 
unpopularity he has suffered in the past, but that is a subject for another 
time and place. In passing, however, I must say that a great change has 
come over the public in the last few years and that gradually people are 
learning that no industry serves them better and at lower cost than 
does the packing industry. 

Standing as he does between the producer, who wants high prices, ~ 
and the consumer, who wants low prices, the packer is compelled to 
operate on the lowest possible margin, and this affects the amount of 
money which is available for wages to the employes of the industry. 
Naturally, packing-house employes want the best wages and the packer 
wants to pay the very maximum because of the quality and the efficiency 
of well-paid labor. The possibilities are determined by laws of economics 
rather than by the views of the employers, for, obviously, when the pack- 
ers cannot control the prices at which they buy live stock and cannot 
control prices at which they sell meat, they must make their 
operating margin cover their needs, rather than make their needs deter- 
mine their margin. As a general proposition, wages in the packing 1n- 
dustry have always approximated the wages paid for similar kinds of 
labor throughout other leading industries. 


It is difficult to compare work in the packing plants with work else- 
where. More or less skill is necessary, but in a large plant it is the kind 
of skill which can be acquired in a comparatively short time, In certain 


35 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


operations the nature of the work is not particularly appealing, despite 
its essentiality. Even so, the industry attracts and holds an ample labor 
force at all times. 


The packing industry has seen a most interesting procession of nation- 
alities. In the early days, the employes were largely English-speaking— 
Irish, Scotch, and some Germans. Many of them belonged to an or- 
ganization known as the Knights of Labor, which precipitated and was 
disrupted by a strike in 1886. After the settlement of this strike, people 
of Polish extraction came into the industry in great numbers, and a 
few years later there was an invasion of Bohemians. Another big strike 
took place in 1894, and with its settlement came another change in the 
nationality of packing-house employes. This time, Russia and south- 
eastern Europe provided the workers. Many of them could not speak 
English; few of them were familiar with American customs. They were 
easily misled, misdirected, and exploited by self-appointed leaders, and 
the early part of the twentieth century saw many disputes and much dis- 
agreement. Relations between the packers and their employes were 
anything but satisfactory. 


That was the situation which prevailed when the Great War broke. 
The American meat packers were a much bigger factor in the winning 
of the war than most people realize. You will remember that the 
slogan of the day was “Food will win the war.” Food in itself could 
not have won the war without proper and adequate distribution, and 
it was the meat packers on whom the government had to depend for 
distribution. The industry knew how to provide meats and had the 
equipment necessary for getting it to the places where it was needed. 
A constant supply of fresh and wholesome meat for the armies in 
France was of equal importance to supplies of ammunition—and more 
difficult to deliver, because meat is perishable. 


Under these circumstances, it was imperative that steps be taken to 
prevent any labor difficulties which might interfere with the regular 
movement of meat supplies. Thus it came about that the government 
appointed an official mediator in the person of Federal Judge Samuel 
Alschuler, who was charged with arbitrating any grievances having to 
do with wages and working conditions. Judge Alschuler served in that 
capacity until the war ended in 1918, and continued to serve until the 


fall of 1921. 


With the end of federal mediation and arbitration in sight, Armour 
and Company took up this labor problem as it had never been taken up 
before with its employes, and worked out the details of a plan designed 
to aid in solving the age-old differences between employe and employer. 
It is this plan and the manner in which it has worked for some five 


36 


years which I have been asked to discuss. Let me preface the discus- 
sion with the reading of a letter which J. Ogden Armour, then president 
of the company, and now chairman of the board of directors, addressed 
to the plant employes. It carried the official offering of the plan: 


“World events of the past few years demonstrated as never be- 
fore that cooperation is one of the greatest factors in adjusting 
anything worth while. The meat-packing industry has reached the 
point where there must be greater cooperation between employers 
and employes. . 

“The directors of the company have decided to establish a medium 
whereby matters of mutual interest to the employes and the com- 
pany may be discussed and adjusted. To exercise this function 
properly the employes must learn and recognize the responsibility 
that the business has to the public and its limitations in the matter 
of providing for the needs of both its owners and its workers. The 
success of business is measured by its returns to owners and em- 
ployes and by its service’to the public. No business can be suc- 
cessful which does not serve all three. Disagreement means busi- 
ness failure, no dividends for the owners, no wages for the work- 
ers, no service for the public. 

“With a view of making real cooperation possible, representatives 
of the employes and representatives of the management have agreed 
upon the plan which is outlined in this accompanying tentative 
constitution. In this, means have been provided for the prompt 
and orderly consideration of all matters of mutual interest such 

as wages, hours of labor, working conditions, sanitary and safety 
MeASUTES, -EtC. 

“Any employe who may be selected to serve in any capacity in 
connection with the operation of this plan, shall be wholly free in 
the performance of his duty as such and he shall not be discrim- 
inated against on account of any action taken by him in good faith 
in his representative capacity. The superintendent of the plant and 
the general superintendent have been designated to see that this 
provision is carried out. 

‘Tt is my firm belief that the cooperation which this plan makes 
possible will be of mutual advantage to employe, to employer and 
to the people whom we both serve.” 


The employes thereupon elected representatives, who were empowered 
to sit down in conference with the management representatives and draw 
up a constitution governing the relations between employes and man- 
agement, and providing ways and means for presenting, hearing, and 


37 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 -.4, 1927 


deciding grievances and disputes of all kinds. The outstanding features 
of the plan which they adopted and which we now know as the Armour 
Employes’ Representation Plan are: 

1. A statement of purpose as follows: 

In order to give the employes of the company a voice in regard to 
the conditions under which they labor, to provide an orderly and ex- 
‘peditious procedure for the prevention and adjustment of any future 
differences, and to aid in the development of all matters of mutual 
benefit to the employes and the company, a definite method of repre- 
sentation of employes has been agreed upon. 

2. Divisional committees and conference boards for all plants where 
size and local conditions warrant; the divisional committees and con- 
ference boards to be comprised of equal numbers of representatives of 
the employes and of the management; the employe representatives to be 
elected directly by the employes, by secret ballot, and the management 
representatives to be appointed by the management; both at all tumes to 
have equal voice and voting power in the consideration of matters com- 
ing before them; the divisional committees having original jurisdiction 
in their respective divisions namely, the beef division, pork division, 
production division, and mechanical division; the conference board hav- 
ing general jurisdiction over the plant as a whole and being the appeal 
body from the divisional committees; one employe representative on the 
board for each 200 employes in the smaller plants, and each 300 em- 
ployes in the larger ones. 

3. Representatives of the employes must be actual employes of the 
company in that division of the business from which they are elected, 
and all hourly paid employes twenty-one years of age and over who are 
citizens of the United States and in the service of Armour and Com- 
pany continuously for one year are eligible to hold office. 

4, All hourly paid employes over eighteen years of age, both men and 
women, shall be entitled to vote, by secret ballot, provided they have 
been in the service of the company for thirty days immediately prior to 
election. Terms of office of employe representatives shall be one year. 

5. If the service of any employe representative becomes unsatisfactory 
to the employes of the precinct or division from which he was elected, 
they may recall him and elect someone else in his stead. 

6. On all matters of dispute the employes shall vote as a unit in 
accord with the wishes of the majority, and the management representa- 
tives likewise. 

7. If it should become evident that employes and management can- 
not agree on a decision in any matter, provision for arbitration 1s made. 
This provision for arbitration is a backstop which absolutely insures 
the satisfactory adjustment of any problem. It is an evidence of the 


38 


good faith of both the employes and the company and ‘is necessary in 
any plan which really has teeth and is what it claims to be. 

These are but the highlights of the plan which goes into considerable 
detail in specifying the ways and means for meeting and solving all 
disputes that may arise between employe and employer. 

Any employe desiring to bring any matter before his divisional com- 
mittee or the conference board may present it to the employment super- 
intendent either in person or through his representative. If the matter 
cannot be adjusted by the parties directly concerned—usually the super- 
intendent and the employe—it then goes to the divisional committee, and 
if this divisional committee cannot solve the problem, the plant con- 
ference board takes action. 7 

Matters of general or interplant interest go to the general conference 
board, which meets on call in Chicago and which is, in effect, our 
supreme court. 

The first meeting of the general conference board was one long to 
be remembered. For the first time in the company’s history, duly elected 
leaders of the plant workers sat opposite the management representatives 
at the same conference table. It was a new experience for both of 
them and they were nervous and skittish. They did not as yet know 
each other. They had not yet learned from experience that the best 
way to iron out grievances is to bring them into the open. 

The conference board was cosmopolitan, particularly the employe 
representatives. Among them were common laborers and skilled mech- 
anics, men with college education and men with no schooling, white 
men and black men, white collars and overalls. In one respect, how- 
ever, they were alike; they were intelligent and fair minded. They 
realized that if their conference was successful they would bring about 
a new relationship between employe and employer. 


In the very nature of things, agreements which are worth anything 
are reached by concessions from both sides, and every time the em- 
ploye representatives were asked to make a concession, they had before 
them the spectre of the rumpus which would be raised by their critics. 
Nevertheless, they stuck to their jobs like men and drew up the rules 
and regulations of the conference plan, and these were later ratified 
by the employes. 

Unfortunately, very soon after its adoption the conference board con- 
sidered and agreed to a wage decrease. They agreed to it just as re- 
luctantly as you or I would, with all the regret and ‘dislike that such 
an action arouses in a normal human being. But they were convinced 
that it was necessary; that the business had retrenched in every possible 
direction first, and the reduction of wages was only asked as a final 
measure after every other effort to reduce costs had failed to accom- 


39 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


plish its purpose. Of course, this action made the plan a target for 
certain leaders who had been more or less recognized as spokesmen for 
the packing-house employes, even though they were not actively en- 
gaged in the packing industry. 

These leaders called a strike in protest against the wage cut and some 
of the packing-house employes responded, with the result that for a 
few days the operations of the plants were hindered. In Chicago, out of 
a total working force of 10,523 people, there were absent from work 
on the morning of the strike just 352. The normal number of absentees 
runs about 1% per cent, so you can readily see that a great majority 
of the employes stuck by the conference board. There was evident in 
the strike from the very first a communistic and revolutionary group. 
They were active in intimidation and were strangers to packing town. 
Even the former leaders did not seem to know them and were not in 
sympathy with their acts of violence. As soon as the intimidation was 
controlled and workers could come and go safely to and from their 
work, normal operations were resumed. The strike was of short “dura- 
tion. 

It was recognized, however, that the success which attended reduc- 
tion of wages through the action of the conference board was not the 
acid test. The board had to demonstrate its ability and power to raise 
as well as to lower wages, and it had its opportunity in the course of 
the next year. When conditions seemed to warrant it, the employe 
representatives on the conference board requested a wage increase, 
whereupon the board directed a survey of wages and conditions of 
work in comparable industries, to determine the true facts. | 

The survey was made by joint committees of employe representa- 
tives and management representatives. These men were given time off 
from their labors and furnished credentials which gave them entree at 
such plants as they cared to visit. When they finished their survey they 
recommended an tncrease of approximately 10 per cent and the board 
adopted the recommendation and passed it on to the company execu- 
tives, who made it effective. 

Since that time a survey of wage and working conditions in the 
large plants is a regular event each spring, and it is worth noting that 
on at least two occasions the employe representatives themselves declined 
to support a wage increase request after their survey, without the matter 
coming to the formal attention of the board. 

Incidentally, it will interest you to know that wage rates in the pack- 
ing industry are above the average. The Monthly Labor Review of 
the United States Department of Labor, issued in May, 1926, stated 
that the average wage rate of common labor throughout the United 
States was 40% cents per hour. The meat packers’ average rate for 


40 


common labor is 41.2 cents per hour, the rate at nearly all plants being 
42% cents per hour. The average wages for employes of all classes 
in the industry, as determined by the same authority, is 48 cents an 
hour—a figure that compares very favorably with the average for labor 
generally. 

A statement of wage rates as applied to the packing industry is not 
conclusive as to actual earnings, for the reason that conditions over 
which the industry has no control prevent steady and even employ- 
ment. This is particularly true in the departments where killing is 
done and in those departments which handle the immediate output of 
these killing departments. Some ten million farmers and live stock 
raisers ship when they see fit, and as a result there are days when 
there are a great many more meat animals than the packing plants can 
handle, and other days when there are fewer than the packing plants 
require. This uneven receipt of raw material constitutes one of the 
big problems of the meat packers and tends to bring about irregular 
working conditions, with alternate layoffs and overtime. 

The Armour conference board has approved a plan which guarantees 
the workers pay for forty hours weekly. This is equivalent to five 
eight-hour days. An actual eight-hour day is practically an impossi- 
bility so far as the meat-packing industry is concerned. In theory we 
have what amounts to a nine-hour basic day, and overtime rates are so 
arranged that they permit the handling of heavy receipts without burden- 
some penalties. Every effort is made to provide at least forty hours of 
work each week, but the impossibility of so doing is evidenced by the 
fact that Armour and Company finds it necessary to pay from $300,000 
to $500,000 per year to employes as guarantees and excess pay for 
overtime. 

Successful working out of hours and wages are only part of the 
accomplishments of the Employe Representation Plan. After the big and 
absorbing problems had been settled to the satisfaction of employes and 
management, the conference boards gave attention to other matters and 
led the way in constructive effort along other lines. 

One of the greatest achievements of the conference board was in 
securing for the employes the privilege of acquiring ownership of stock 
in the company. Approximately 100,000 shares of stock, representing 
a par value of $10,000,000, were sold to employes in the plants. These 
employes are drawing dividends on that stock at the rate of about 
$7U0,000 annually, and those who are closest to the situation predict 
that employes will purchase stock in ever increasing amounts as the 
years go on and will in time own a very large share of the business 
which employs them. It is interesting to contrast this method of 
acquiring control with the methods advocated by certain radicals. 


Al 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Another accomplishment of the conference board les in the introduc- 
tion of group life and health insurance. At the request of the board, 
Armour and Company purchased a blanket policy with a great insurance 
company, providing $1,000 life insurance for male employes and $750 
for women employes. Each policy covers death from any cause and 
pays to the beneficiaries the face value of the policy. In case of total 
permanent disability, the full value of the policy will be paid in monthly 
installments to the employe while he is living. In case of sickness’ or 
accident—other than accident encountered in the plants, which are cov- 
ered by state compensation laws—the health insurance policy provides for 
payments of $10 a week to men and $7.50 a week to women, up to a 
total of thirteen weeks, and provides in addition free service of visiting 
nurses, at the call of the employe. For this protection, male employes 
pay at the rate of 35 cents a week, and women at the rate of 25 cents 
a week. Armour and Company pays the balance of the net cost as well 
as all expense of administration. 

The conference board secured another substantial advantage for the 
people they represent—that of vacations with pay for plant workers who 
are on an hourly basis. In the past, vacations with pay were exclusively 
the heritage of salaried workers. Now, the hourly workers who have 
been in the employ of the company for five years or longer are entitled 
to one week’s vacation with pay, or—and this is the unusual feature 
about the conference board vacations—the employe may continue at work 
and draw pay for the vacation period to which he was entitled. This pro- 
vision is in spite of the fact that employment is irregular, and that vaca- 
tions might not be justified purely from the standpoint of the need for 
rest and recreation. | 

Very constructive work has been done by the conference board along 
lines of accident prevention and the reduction of waste. Campaigns 
aimed to keep the minds of the workers from wandering away from their 
tasks have resulted in a considerable reduction in the number and sever- 
ity of accidents and in the losses occasioned by spoilage of product and 
supplies through careless handling. 

The conference board has proved a medium for the development of 
men. Employe representatives have to win their places in elections. 
That requires them to demonstrate leadership abilities and to exercise 
and develop these abilities afterwards, for unless they give satisfaction to 
their constituents they are subject to recall. Many of the representa- 
tives have impressed the management with their fitness for bigger jobs 
and promotions have resulted. Management representatives, too, have 
been broadened and developed by reason of the conferences that are an 
integral part of the plan. Nearly every plant superintendent agrees 
that Employe Representation has made supervision easier. Petty griev- 


42 


ances which formerly occupied a considerable part of the superin- 
tendent’s time are ironed out at their inception and without stoppage 
of work. The working force itself has greater stability «than 
before, for jobs with Armour and Company now appeal to people 
who desire assurance of a square deal and of their day in court, and 
the special advantages secured by the conference board. 

Primarily, the Employe Representation Plan was designed to solve the 
problems incident to wages and working conditions, but with these solved 
and with the machinery existing for meeting new problems as they arise, 
the conference boards are able to give more and more of their time to 
constructive effort along less controversial but nevertheless highly im- 
portant lines. In the five years during which we have enjoyed Employe 
Representation in our plants, we have come to believe that it is thor- 
oughly practical and thoroughly satisfactory, both to employes and to 
employers. Started as an experiment, it has demonstrated its practic- 
ability, and there is greater cooperation and better feeling today between 
the management and the workers than ever before. 

We feel that we have made a step forward and that strife and bitter 
conflict are getting further and further away, and we have reason to 
hope that through Employe Representation harmonious working con- 

ditions will constantly become more secure through “the rule of reason.” 


Discussion of Mr. Ellerd’s Address. 


W. J. Mitrar, General Electric Company, Bloomfield, N. J.: I agree 
with Mr. Ellerd’s statement. We have tried the same plan since 1918 
and it has been consistent all the way through. . 

Dr. A. E. SHipLey, Knox Hat Company, Brooklyn, N. Y:: I want 
to back up what Mr. Ellerd and Mr. Millar say. We started our plan 
in 1919 and we believe it is an intimate part of our business. As Mr. 
Ellerd said, it must pay. It must consider working conditions, matters 
of production, and education, as the keynotes. Our group conferences 
offer opportunities to meet the questions raised by the employes, con- 
cerning conditions of work, production, finances of the company, and all 
problems, in a very practical way. I might say also that at the present 
time we have 155 employes who for the past eight years have served at 
one time or another on the council. Think what that means as a leaven 
for education. And it is our policy to bring employe representatives to 
this Conference the same as the Tidewater Oil and other organizations. 

F. H. SransFIELp, Bridgeport Brass Company, Bridgeport, Conn. : Our 
experience has been similar to that of others. We have had a plan in ex- 
istence for eight years now and find it has worked out very satisfactorily 
and has been of great assistance in carrying out an educational program 
with the workers. 

43 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


R. C. McCartuy, Rockland Finishing Company, Garnerville, N. Y.: 
Every speaker since Mr. Ellerd has intimated that the plan is successful, 
and 4 am afraid the crowd will get the idea that it is 100 per cent. We 
now have the Employe Representation plan in effect but we have some 
problems. It is not perfect by any means and yet we wouldn’t admit that 
it is unsuccessful. I am wondering what cooperation you get from the 
foreman in your plant. Do the foremen have any resistance to offer and 
why? In our own plant once in a while we run across a foreman who 
feels that the employe representative has too much authority. If a prob- 
lem comes up, and you don't go to the foreman with it, but to your 
superintendent or.board, it makes the foreman sore. Do you find that in 
your plant? , 

F. H. STANSFIELD: In our concern we make it a practice to have all 
problems reported to the foreman first, and if they do not receive action 
immediately then they are taken up with the committees. 

Harvey G. ELLEerD: I attempted to make that point in my paper. It 
seems to me it would be a serious thing not to give the foreman the 
opportunity to adjust a supposed grievance in his own department before 
submitting it for consideration by any of these committees. And we 
always do it. Probably there is an influence brought about through the 
existence of these plans that tends to make foremen even more careful 
and considerate in their decisions. 1 have always illustrated it to the 
employes by saying it is like a policeman on a beat. He may walk the 
beat for years and have nothing to do, but the fact that he is there might 
restrain somebody from some unlawful act, and so with the existence of 
these committees and conference boards. They may cause cooler and 
better judgment to be used in affairs. 

Dr. A. E. Suiprey: Our foremen sare the, representatives on. oun 
council. Our council is a staff organization, and the foremen have 
regular orders from the superintendent; and things must come before 
the line organization first. 

R. C. McCartuy: In cases. where you lowered wages 10 per cent, 
Mr. Ellerd, and your employes’ board passed favorably upon the reduc- 
tion—what was the attitude of the employes who elected these repre- 
sentatives after they had attended the meeting and accepted the cut? 

Harvey G. ELLterp: The representatives naturally had a difficult time 
explaining an unpopular action, but they were fortified with the mate- 
rial which they had received in their conferences and when they showed 
it to the average worker he couldn’t do anything but say, “You did the 
only thing that was left for you to do.” The fact, too, that so few 
responded when the strike call came, indicated to us that they were in 
sympathy with the action of the representatives. 


M. J. StickeEL, Y M CA, Long Island City, N. Y.: What would have 
44 


been the next move in case the employe representatives had declined to 
accede to the reduction? 

Harvey G. ELLerD: Well, that is like considering a lot of things 
that do not happen. We do have this arbitration provision in our con- 
stitution which might have been resorted to. 

M. C. MAxwe tL, Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company, Stamford, 
Conn.: We have had an industrial council established substantially along 
the lines of the Armour Company for about seven years. The plan from 
the management point of view, and I am sure from the employes’ point 
of view, has been most successful. We have handled problems of wage 
- reductions in substantially the same way that Mr. Ellerd has stated that 
Armour has. When the time came, shortly after the Armistice, we 
brought our industrial council into consultation and presented all the 
facts that were in the hands of the management in relation to the 
economics which control the necessity for wage reduction. We took 
great care to see that these facts and figures were thoroughly understood 
by the members of the council, and we were rewarded by the fact that 
by their own volition, emanating from their side of the house, they 
moved and passed a resolution that wages should be reduced 10 per 
cent at that time. The wage reduction went into effect and while it was 
regrettable and we disliked it, it was unavoidable and accepted; and we 
believe a great problem was solved by that medium in presenting the 
facts to our employe representatives. 

Another fact that we regard as beneficial in the use of our council 
was touched on briefly by the gentleman from Knox Hat Company, and 
that is the educational feature. The term of office of our employes is 
six months. They may be reelected, but we have some twenty or twenty- 
five representatives who every six months go out into the plant and who 
have been educated in the problems of management. One of the great 
reasons why industrial strife has existed in the past is that the worker 
doesn’t know the other fellow’s side of the problem. He doesn’t know 
the problem that confronts management. He doesn’t understand the 
financial end. He wants to know that the payroll is coming, but he 
doesn’t know where it is coming from. He thinks that management has 
some God-given power, so that all it has to do is to shake the apple 
tree and the money comes. He doesn’t realize that we have competi- 
tion and troubles with service. But by means of this education that 
we make a feature in our council, bringing these twenty to twenty- 
five employes in and making them cognizant of these facts, they go out 
into our shop and teach our people, and they have a broader point of 
view of those great problems. 

Disputes must always be referred to the regular organization. They 
go to the foreman, and if not settled there, they go to the department 


45 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


superintendent. They may go to the industrial council, but proof must 
be furnished on any question, that it has been through the regular 
channels and has not been satisfactorily settled. 


G. B. Comrort, Schramm, Incorporated, West Chester, Pa.: The 
principal comment I would make from experience with a committee 
proposition which was not satisfactory, is that it might fail because of 
the dominance of the managerial side. 


J. M. Groves, Y M C A, New Haven, Conn.: At Dennison Manufac- 
turing Company, the works committee, which is rather large (sixty 
representatives), meets by itself and discusses problems and proposals. — 
and if any subject passes the works committee it then goes to the con- 
ference committee. There are some dozen conference committees in 
which the management and men are equally represented. 


I would like to ask, in the light of Mr. Comfort’s remark, and the 
experience of Armour, if there is any feeling on the employes’ side that 
the men are at a disadvantage in sitting on a conference board which, 
I understand is a direct board, with management and men both repre- 
sented. 


Harvey G. Eiierp: It is advantageous for them to meet jointly for 
they must keep open-minded. Under our plan members of either 
group can retire from the meeting and meet separately if they wish to 
formulate their own plans. That, however, has not been availed of. in 
a long time, and I am decidedly opposed to a plan where one group meets 
separately and starts an action, builds up something, and then presents 
it to a group for the privilege of tearing it to pieces. 

I am convinced that the right way is joint action and discussion where 
each side can listen and participate. — 


ProFessor H. B. Hastines, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.: I. 
understood Mr. Ellerd to say that under his plan the employes were 
required to vote as a unit. Is that correct? 

Harvey G. Evierp:. Yes. 

ProFessor HaAstincs: Is that as wise as some plans such as the Penn- 
sylvania, which provides for individual voting, but requires a two-thirds 
majority? I wondered if your experience was in favor of requiring the 
employes to vote as a unit. 


Harvey G. ELterp: The vote of the employes is fixed by the will 
of the employes, and cast as one vote. Just so is the vote of the man- 
agement, and that is very successful. There is never the opportunity 
for charging that an employe representative has been subsidized by the 
management, or is incurring favor of the management by voting with 
the management representatives. I think the unit voting system is the 
greatest protection for employe representatives that they could have. 


46 


N. L. Ramsey, Joseph Reid Gas Engine Company, Oil City, Pa.: To 
what extent is this plan used in smaller plants? 

M. C. MAxwe tt: I think one of the reasons why this plan has been 
so successful in the large plants and has not been applied in 
the smaller -ones, is the fact that the management in a small 
plant can get in personal contact with the men, and know them and their 
troubles, and can analyze them, and solve the difficulties as they come 
up. In our plan the employe representatives elect a chairman among 
themselves. That chairman has the privilege of calling together at any 
time his own associates and talking over privately the problems which 
concern them, and representing them to the regular meeting of the council 
for general discussion. 


Cuas. R. Towson: Has management made its case? Have we 
any cases where it has failed? ‘ 

M. J. SticKeL: 1 was called in to consult with an organization on 
Employe Representation. They operated for two years and gave it up. 
I recommended that they give it up because | felt that it was only fair 
they should. They had a fundamental weakness, that they had organized 
distinctly and directly to prevent unionization of their men. I felt it 
would be impossible to carry it out on that basis. 


J. C. Crark, Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., New York, N. Y.: 
I recently heard Dr. Leiserson of Toledo give figures; as near as I can 
recall his statement, it was that there had been some 300 failures in 
employe representation plans, and there were now about 1,500 such plans 
in operation. That survey covers a period since 1917. I am not sure of 
those figures, but they are approximate. 

The gentleman from Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company claimed 
that there was a lot of value in the education of employes in the prob- 
lems of management. I would like to hear what he has to say about 
the reverse of that proposition. Has there been value in educating 
management in the problems of the employe? 

M. C. MAXWELL: Decidedly. It has made them see the other fellow’s 
point of view and has been equally successful on the side of educating 
management in broadmindedness and getting down to human, man to man 
contact. . 

Cuas R. Towson: How many have found these plans have been edu- 
cational to both sides? 

. . . Almost unanimous .. . 

Memeer: As to the percentage of employes voting for the repre- 
sentatives, is it as large now as at first? 

Harvey G. ELLerp: Larger than it was at the beginning; and in every 
plant outside of Chicago we can count on 98 per cent perfect ballots 

47 


Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


being registered. In Chicago, at our last election in July, 93 per cent 
of the people voted. | 

Dr. G. H. Tarsot, Presbyterian Church, Passaic, N. J.: I would like 
to ask if the workers are allowed to have anyone advise them who is not 
employed by the company. 

Harvey G. ELLerD: Do you mean advise them in the conference 
room? 

Dr. TaLtsot: At any time. 

Harvey G. ELterp: It is immaterial where they go or who advises 
them. We do not permit people in our discussions who are not employes. 

Dr. Tatsot: You wouldn’t permit the workers to have anyone in 

there to frame their thoughts for them? : 
Harvey G. Etterp: Not in the conference room. 

Dr. Tatzor:, Do they feel at any disadvantage because of that? 

Harvey G. ELterp: They do not seem to feel so, and I have not 
observed any disadvantage. Most of the men express themselves clearly 
and are fearless, and I have seen management representatives at a de- 
cided disadvantage in a good many debates. 

Dr. TatsotT: The point I was trying to raise is this: There seems 
to be a great objection to the “company union” idea on the basis that 
although the worker might have as many votes, yet he has not the mental 
capacity to sit down and argue with the man who has the facts and 
figures. The workers feel that, and say, “We can’t argue with you. 
We have to take it. But if we knew as much as you do we wouldn't 
feel as you do about it.’ And that is the trouble with the strikers in 
the city of Passaic at the present time. 

H. A. Marr, Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Jersey 
City, N. J.: I would like to ask how the nominations are made? 

Harvey G. ELterp: A list is posted in every department of every - 
eligible employe, and from that, selections are made for nominations. 
The two persons getting the largest number of votes have their names 
placed on the election ballot, and then the one who receives the largest 
number is elected. 

MemMBeER: Any politics? 

Harvey G. ELterp: Plenty of it. 

J. J. McGratu, Tide Water Oil Company, Bayonne, N. J.: Tide 
Water has had a works council plan of industrial representation for five 
years. It has been very successful. The resistance of the foreman was 
one of the questions brought up. They are human and when our plan 
was put into effect there was a slight resistance, but as they studied it, 
and, as time went on, that resistance was wiped out. 

James A. Emery, National Association of Manufacturers, Washing- 
ton, D. C.: I am impressed with this freedom of your forum here and 


48 


the myriad of interesting speeches that are contributed by a wide variety 
of diversified outlooks. In this interesting discussion this morning you 
_are talking about employe representation and stock ownership, which 
are experiments in modern industry—for they are experiments and ought 
to be recognized as such—and we ought not at this stage of the discussion 
to ask whether or not an experiment has demonstrated its success, so 
that we can say permanently that this or that particular plan is the panacea 
for industrial ills. There is none. 

Human nature will remain the same as it has during the period of 
man’s life and we will contmually make experiments in improving our 
relations with each other; and anything that makes for better under- 
standing between men in the most delicate of all relations outside the 
family—that of the employment relation—undertakes to produce sym- 
pathetic understanding in the cooperative task of successful production, 
is a good beginning. We have a record of 800 plans of employe repre- 
sentation. Some of them work very well. Some of them do not work 
as well. But there are all sorts of variations in the human beings who 
are engaged in performing the tasks. All governments do not work 
equally well. If you ask the average man if he is satisfied with his city, 
his county, his state, or his national government, you will get a variety 
of answers. And if you look over the social life of the world you will 
find that government succeeds with great difference in success every- 
where, and people are profoundly dissatisfied with many forms of it. 
Some do not want any at all. Colleges fall out, and churches have dis- 
sent in their midst. 


Mr. Ellerd said that 98 per cent of those who are to select repre- 
sentatives vote in the Armour plant; and only 42 per cent of those who 
select a President for the United States voted in the last election, and 
only 26 per cent voted for Congress, among the qualified voters in the 
United States, two years ago! 


So we are getting a very fair range of success, and if we compare it 
with other. methods of cooperation between employer and employe, it 
is standing a remarkable test, and we ought to say, “God bless the 
experiment and may it go on with a diversification so characteristic of 
industry.” 

Pie ARKER GY Vie G7 A, a Passaic, N, J.: Does the management of 
Armour and Company regard its plan of employe representation as 
simply an expedient, or is it an expression of the heart interest of man- 
agement in the welfare of the employe? Does management want the 
employe to have a fair chance at all the good things in life, just as it 
wants for itself, or is this simply a mechanical device? 


Harvey G. ELLterp: The answer is perfectly obvious, I believe. The 


49 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


management naturally wants to assure every employe of a fair deal and 
provide the vehicle through which that can be secured. 

H. G. Traver, Traver Engineering Company, Beaver Falls, Pa.; Do 
any of these concerns have employe representation on the board of 
directors, which is the institution that controls most corporations? 

F. J. Kincssury, Bridgeport Brass Company, Bridgeport, Conn.: We 
usually put the general works manager and general sales manager on 
the board of directors. They are properly employes. 

Harvey G. EvLierp: Procter and Gamble Co. has two employes on 
the board of directors. The average employe does not want, to bother 
with matters that concern the board of directors. 

MEMBER: Speaking for the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, we 


have two employe representatives on the board of directors. Up to this 
year we have had one. | 


“All Aboard for Ticonderoga!” 


50 ‘ 


COOPERATION AND PROGRESS 
IN MODERN INDUSTRY 


James A. Emery 


General Counsel, National Association of Manufacturers 


I have attended many conferences in many countries 
connected with many phases of industry, but none 
where the personal factor was more charming, nor 
where one felt in so brief a period that he found in 
the face of every stranger the features of a friend. 

I should just like to lay before you a few facts and 
reflections which | hope may be worthy of some con- 
sideration in your future deliberations. First of all, I 
think that in all industrial discussions we are the victims of a character- 
istic American quality—we are hasty and impetuous. We live in an 
age of speed. Indeed, we move so fast, that we are often blinded by 
the dust of our own-progress. It is difficult to see clearly what is going 
on about us. And we have a peculiar and characteristic American desire 
to get answers to any iproblem quickly and give them immediate effect. 
That is responsible for a good deal of the legislation written on our 
state and national statute books. Sincere people become possessed by 
what they believe to be a valuable method of benefiting others, and 
sharing Mark Twain’s view that it is easier to reform others than 
themselves. A and B decide to try out on C their idea and secure 
political assistance in doing so. Impatient with the: slow progress 
of education and moral training, they desire to use the power of the 
state as a means of immediately bringing about new conduct by statute ; 
and having passed a law, they retire, satisfied that the reform has been 
accomplished. 


So, too, in conferences dealing with any one of our great social prob- 
lems, we are sometimes anxious after discussion to adopt a resolution, and 
thus settle the problem. It has been said of many American organiza- 
tions that they are notable for their capacity to adopt resolutions on 
important subjects, and adjourn. 

Industrial relations are not so peculiarly apart from our other human 
relations, that they have to be handled with unique detachment. Our indus- 
trial relations are the relations of men with each other in the world 
of productive industry. Despite the cynic’s remark that “business is 
a mere taking of profit,’ it is, after all, the great field in which 
all are engaged in various efforts to gain a livelihood, and in which, in 
that famous phrase of Jefferson, they “pursue happiness.” They must 
find it there in the performance of their task and the gaining of a living. 


51 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


The first great material task of an individual or a society is to gain a 
living. To do it, one must win a contest with nature—the greatest con- 
test in which men have ever engaged, a contest that has aroused the 
thought and anxiety of all generations. I{ we follow the fortunes of our 
race, we recall that period between the Norman Conquest and the Indus- 
trial Revolution, when for five hundred years the population of England 
gained little more than 50 per cent, and there was dark foreboding 
among philosophers as to whether that little island could support a more 
abundant population. Life was a contest for subsistence. The forces 
of nature were so powerful, so difficult to overcome, and man’s effort 
so puny, armed as he was, that we had the dark philosophy of Malthus, 
who thought it necessary to decimate population to save the future 
of the race. Then within a brief period, indeed in the seventy-five years 
that followed the first applications of steam, the population of that 
little Island trebled. What had done if? The very forces that aroused 
the superstitious fears of our ancestors were being made the hand- 
maids and bondslaves of the day! 

No more appropriate place could be chosen to consider the circum- 
stances which have fashioned American industrial civilization and created 
the operating principles that have developed our modern life and estab- 
lished our conscious, as well as the roots of our unconscious, cooperation, 
than here beside this lake which was the accepted pathway of colonial 
movement; here by this romantic highway where the destinies of a new 
empire were determined by a people fashioning the stern, strong stuff 
out of which a new race was to be made, while Europe’s politicians were 
blind to the possibilities of this great continent as an outlet for their 
superabundant population or a new source of wealth. 

How difficult were our forefathers’ lives at the beginning of Amer- 
ican government! The Colonies had won political independence, but were 
in abject economic servitude. Pitt had said that the Colonies should not 
be permitted “to make a hobnail or horseshoe for themselves.” They 
possessed no industry, in the rudest modern sense of the word, only the 
little handicrafts of the village. They were fishers, farmers, and rude 
artisans without even the beginnings of those discoveries that were 
to lay the foundation of England’s industrial supremacy. By act of Par- 
liament the first discoveries of applied power to the textile industries were 
kept from them, and it was an offense to export a blueprint or permit an 
artisan to leave the mother country. 

In the period between Yorktown and the adoption of the Constitution, 
the American market was flooded with goods which took out of the 
Colonies the last dollar they possessed. The Colonies, once standing 
shoulder to shoulder in the struggle for political independence, were 
falling apart in the economic conflict. There were hours in that “critical 


52 ' 


period of American history,’ when Connecticut, New York, and New 
Jersey were on the verge of civil war. Out of those first attempts in that 
old house which still stands in Alexandria, to compose the boundary 
differences of Maryland and Virginia, came the serious consideration of 
the conflict of economic interest and the necessity for greater unity, which 
laid the foundations for the Constitution, gave us the form of a nation, 
the free flow of commerce within our borders, and the security of an 
ordered commonwealth, predicated upon two great fundamental princi- 
ples, that have been the impelling, driving force of America’s material and 
spiritual life, the motive power of her idealism, and the very funda- 
mentals of her moral being. These principles are, first—the worth, dignity, 
and nobility of the individual, a soul created by an Almighty Master, 
and placed here to work out his temporal and. eternal salvation, the 
recognition that the individual is the dynamo of material progress. Sec- 
ond, the fact that with the diversified talent with which Dwinity had 
endowed his creature, he could not work out hts own temporal salvation 
without contributing to society, and the more freely he was permitted to 
express himself, the more certainly he would find his temporal salvation 
and make his continuing contribution to the State im the endeavor to 
better his own condition and provide for hts security and that of his 
dependents. 


Upon that philosophy, economic and moral, we fashioned the Amer- 
ican State. At the end of the five-year period that followed the adoption 
of the Constitution we find the gloomy Washington, who had said “We 
_are fast verging on anarchy and revolution,” declaring that never in so 
brief a time had so much material prosperity come to a people. Because, 
with the adoption of that idea cast into the mold of a limited govern- 
ment, under a written Constituion, carefully prescribing the power of 
political agents, we gave a new hope for the human heart, a new direction 
to human purpose, a new security to the fruits of human effort. James 
Madison wrote the economic foundation of American life when he said 
in The Federalist that the true purpose of government as we conceived it 
was to protect and promote the varying and different capacities of men 
to acquire and employ property. He was no worshipper of “property,” 
but he recognized property as the fruit of effort, as an extension of 
personality, as all that guarantees security against the future and without 
which no man could be truly free. Tolstoi at a later date said, “Prop- 
erty and liberty enter the heart of the peasant together.” Upon that 
rock Socialism has split. 


What a picture it is, the progress of this young society! With 
little encouragement and vast obstructions, it fashioned the beginnings 
of its economic life! Within fifteen years the echo of Fulton’s whistle 

53 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


startled the Palisades. Within another fifteen years, the first locomotives 
were frightening the farmer’s horse along the highway. | 

When the Constitution was adopted, the Collector of His Majesty’s 
Port of Liverpool reported to London that less than five hundred bales of 
cotton were raised within the Colonies in 1789. It took thirteen hours 
of the labor of a slave to separate enough lint from its seed to give us a 
pound, until the genius of Eli Whitney fashioned the gin and laid the 
foundations of the kingdom of cotton, the economic power which was to 
threaten the very security of the Union. Then another ingenious Yankee, 
in the very moment when the fates trembled in the balance, released 
hundreds of thousands of men to Abraham Lincoln, by inventing Mc- 
Cormick’s reaper. For the first time in the history of the Civil War, the 
people exported a surplus of food. 

In the meantime one invention after another was enlarging the 
foundations of American manufacture. In the very moment when 
Hood’s pathetic “Song of the Shirt” was discussed in London drawing 
rooms, a gaunt, half-starved New Englander in a Harvard garret was 
writing the revolutionary music of the sewing machine. From improved 
machinery to new applications of power, and the foundations of mass 
production, with Whitney and Colt in New England, we were laying the 
beginnings of an independent American economic life. Side by side with 
these developments were contemporary achievements in administration 
and management, equally necessary, that the suggestions of the inventor 
might be applied through the factory to the common uses of the people. 

There steadily developed a new partnership between mine and field, 
forest and factory, that found in those rude beginnings that which was 
to take raw material and fashion it into things to meet the convenience, 
need and luxury of men. Even in that period before the Civil War, 
there were beginnings of unconscious cooperation, a new realization of 
the value of multiplied production, a steady endeavor on the part of 
states to encourage the inventor. 

But factories were small, communication slow and uncertain, power 
but rudely applied. We had not yet learned to turn the night into day, 
but had established crudely and roughly, the foundation of the great 
basic industries we now possess. Then within the great armies of the 
Civil War, men learned to fight and work together in numbers under 
executive direction. Then we began to destroy Webster’s great illusion 
that our country was so vast, our distances so great, that integration 
was impossible. Transportation, the handmaid and servant of industrial 
production, with the aid of the inventive genius and the manufacturer, 
began to extend the dominion of communication and bind us into a 
geographic and social unit. : : 

Then came that period when the new thought of associated oppor- 


54 ; 


tunity expressed itself in those rapid corporate developments that 
marked the trust era, when some men, dissatisfied with the ordinary 
operation of economic law, undertook to become its master and arbi- 
trarily control the flow of production. It was a period of such quick 
advance and many were so immersed in the doing of the task, that 
they gave little heed to its moral aspect or economic consequences. 

Then it seemed as though the Great War turned us in upon our- 
selves. It is impossible, of course, to give anything like a compre- 
hensive survey of that transition period. A nation of one hundred 
millions found itself not by law but by spontaneous voluntary action, 
enduring self-restraint and self-denial, unnatural to a people living in 
bounteous plenty. And this left its abiding impress upon us. There 
were many other influences, Of course. But we can easily trace in the 
‘startling changes that have taken place, in the intensive study of our 
industrial problem in’terms of enlightened self-interest, the self-denying 
influence of war sacrifice. 

We discovered, also, the difficulty of determining what were the essen- 
tial things in production. We learned a new sense of our dependence 
upon each other. We found that the things which appeared to be re- 
motely connected with us were nevertheless highly essential. When men 
declared that “goods won the war,” or “bullets won the war,” or “ma- 
chines won the war,” or ‘‘food won the war,” they were but suddenly 
recognizing and expressing a newly perceived interdependence. 

Now it is very easy to become the victim of words; to resolve the 
great problem of employment relations into a mere contrast between 
abstractions, to call it the conflict.of capital and labor. That is a great 
misnomer, because capital is nothing but canned labor. It is the labor 
of the past accumulated in the form of some fruit of human effort— 
materials, goods, structures, machinery—wealth in all its forms, least 
of all money. All the accumulations and savings of those gone before 
are the common inheritance of all who come after. Every infant who 
enters this world finds himself the joint heir of the accumulated effort 
of the past—its invention, art, literature, education, everything—and it 
is for him to make himself its master. But on the economic side he 
is either the heir or the victim, as his predecessors have planned well 
or badly. The quality of life that any people may lead is determined 
by their mastery over nature, their capacity for production, that alone 
gives them a continuously increasing surplus; and that surplus over and 
above what they consume we call capital, in all the forms which it may 
take. To speak of the relation in the world today between those engaged 
in managing and those engaged in working under their dwectton as a 
battle between “Labor and Capital” is a paradox, unless you mean that 
labor is fighting itself in its canned form, that it ts turning its hand 


5d 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


against the one thing that can secure its future, increase its earning 
power, enlarge its life, and make greater tts capacity for social enjoy- 
ment. For, “capitalists” are not merely wealthy men. Every man 1s 
a capitalist who spends less than he makes. There is no greater contri- 
bution to our social problems than to help make “capitalists.” America’s 
greatest gain is the fact that never before have we had so many who 
enjoy a broad margin above need and expenditure. 

While we are getting very melancholy about the number and com- 
plexity of the problems that follow in the train of this enormous prog- 
tess, we must recognize them first-of all as a part of the wpricewcs 
that progress. You cannot substitute a complicated for a simple life 
without creating problems. You cannot substitute an interdependent 
industrial civilization for an independent agricultural civilization, with- 
out the difficulties that necessarily arise out of the dependence of the 
parties in the new state which they have created. And that is the great 
transformation that has taken place with us. The world of Napoleon 
was one of independent, self-sufficient, agricultural states. The world 
of today is one of interdependent industrial states. Each of us goes 
about his daily task in the confident expectation that every other man 
will perform his. For the food that is served upon our table may come 
from hundreds of miles, the clothes on our back, the comforts we 
enjoy, the services upon which we are dependent, the materials out 
of which our industry is to be carried forward, the fuel or power re- 
quired—all the activities of daily life carried on within the confines of 
any great city, represent the continuing contributions of hundreds of 
thousands of human beings operating in farm, field, forest and factory. 

When you suddenly interrupt that flow you are startled to find that 
it is more fatal to a city than a belligerent army. When we learn in- 
terdependence we learn the necessity for cooperation. You cannot oper- 
ate a civilization like this without continuing cooperation. It is the 
foundation of its present; on its development rests enttrely the security 
of the future. 

I could refer to the fact that we are producing 64 per cent and 
consuming about 57 per cent of the world’s steel; producing 54 and con- 
suming about 53 per cent of the world’s iron; producing 43 per cent of 
the world’s coal and consuming 42; almost the same proportion of the 
world’s timber. We are raising 67 per cent of the world’s cotton and 
fabricating 37 per cent. We own a majority of the railroad mileage of 
the world, and any one of America’s large cities possesses more tele- 
phones than a European principality. We have done this with 7 per cent 
of the world’s population. 

But the most extraordinary example of the material wealth of Am- 
erica is the startling economic fact suggested by the American Automo- 


56 : 


bile Chamber of Commerce, that we have developed a system of private 
transportation in which we have twenty million users of automobiles, 
who, it is estimated, spend seven hundred dollars a year, on an average, 
for the mere upkeep of a car. That is fourteen billion dollars, to oper- 
ate a private automobile system, and it provides a very mobile labor 
force. We have a new army of Arabs who can fold up their Fords 
but cannot “silently steal away.” 

One of the most helpful things that has come with the complexity 
of our industrial life is the necessity, whether men like tt or not, of 
taking part in others’. problems. If moral considerations do not impel 
it, enlightened self-interest does. The tasks of production as they be- 
come more complex require constantly a more complete understanding 
of their character by the parties who participate in them. Human 
experience in terms of history indicates that no institution endures in 
which there is not a body of beneficiaries to support the institution. 
The right to own property, and its protection, never endures among a 
people who have little chance to possess it. As you widen the base of 
opportunity for acquisition and improvement of conditions, you make 
more secure the foundations of the institutions that rest upon it. And 
one of the most striking characteristics of this period since the Great War 
is the growing habit of investment and the diffuson of ownership among 
the American people. 

I apply that not to workers alone. When you consider that within 
ten years the amount of savings banks deposits has increased from a 
little over eleven billion to more than twenty billion, that the number 
of depositors has increased from slightly over eleven million to over 
thirty-eight million; when you realize that in 1925 there were more than 
sixty billions of life insurance in the United States among eighty-three 
million policyholders; and that within the year 1926 for the first six 
months new life insurance has been written at the rate of almost one 
billion a month; when you realize that your Building and Loan Asso- 
clations, within a ten-year period, have grown from a membership of 
little more than three million to more than seven million, and their 
assets have increased from a little over one billion to more than four 
billion; when you discover that money loaned through these great trus- 
teeships in insurance means that where the money lies the ownership 
follows; that forty-five million. owners or holders of life insurance 
policies represent, in the opinion of actuaries, some forty-five million 
underlying owners of the properties against which loans are made— 
when you realize these facts you see a new stability in human life, a 
steady tendency toward home building and home owning, thrift and 
saving as fixed characteristics. 

1 don’t think that just because it is wise for an employe to invest 


57 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


that he should necessarily become the owner of stock of the plant in 
which he works. No employe should ever be encouraged to invest 
in stock the future of which is uncertain. Any increase of employe 
ownership of stock that is followed by recessions and losses will only 
be discouraging to the idea of investment itself, and redound to the 
injury of relations between employer and employe. 

Dividends representing the profits of American business corporations 
are being distributed in increasing volume and proportion to those pos- 
sessed of small incomes. One of the most interesting suggestions made 
from a study of income tax returns is that in the year 1917 those with 
incomes of five thousand dollars and under were receiving about 9 per 
cent of the dividend distribution of the United States. In 1923 they 
were receiving about 23 per cent of the total dividend distribution of 
the United States. On the other hand, the returns in the same class 
from interest and rents were increasing both in volume and proportion, 
indicating the widespread investment by wage earners. ‘That may be 
said with still greater emphasis regarding the middle class, up to the 
twenty-thousand-dollar income. 

Brokers tell of an enormous diffusion of bond investment, greater 
than has ever been known in the history of this country. There is 
evidence of increasing home construction and ownership, as well as 
of diffusion of stock. It has been estimated that in 1900 there were 
perhaps four million stockholders in American business corporations; by 
1922 the number had increased to the neighborhood of fourteen mil- 
lion, and is now approximately twenty million, with a fair allowance 
for reduplications! 

Now that is placing a very remarkable body of investment at the 
foundation of American life. It is establishing the certain means of 
continuing cooperation, because where a man’s interest, there his heart 
is. Gs#ven a nation of home owners and stockholders and property pos- 
sessors, and you have established with certainty the continuing growth 
of a body of men who adhere firmly to those fundamental principles 
upon which this system of society ts established. 

And after all, isn’t the great problem, in the field of industrial, social 
or political relations, the perpetuation in the everyday life of our people 
of the fundamental principles which represent the ideals and dynamic 
influences, that have driven American life to its success, idealism, and 
capacity for service, not only to itself but to others? 

It was the French peasant who drenched the soil with his own blood, 
because he was the owner of France, because out of his savings half 
the states of Europe had fashioned fiscal systems. He was fighting to 
the last for what he owned. Yet, those men who died for their soil 
were the lineal descendants of those who carried the torch to Versailles. 


58 


John Jaques Rousseau declared that ‘property was robbery’, and such 
teaching once threatened all ordered society. But possession transformed 
and stabilized the French people. It gave them an abiding interest in 
the land they possessed. And every man who helps another man to 
save and to invest safely, and to accumulate capital is building better 
the foundations of what we term a capitalistic system. Here there is 
little inherited control of industry, and even the inheritance of an in- 
dustry is no assurance of capacity to direct. There 1s no wealth so 
rapidly dissipated as mdustrial wealth in incompetent hands. Manage- 
ment that cannot administer soon ceases to own. While land may be 
handed down through generations, and men may live on its increment 
and the interest of its rents, the possessors of industrial wealth must 
be capable of administering their inheritance or they will not long 


possess it. It passes to more able managers or into the hands of more 
competent competitors. 


When I observe the success we have won, the compelling forces mak- 
ing for cooperation among men, and the very circumstances of our in- 
dustrial life urging it ever more and more, the intensive interest of 
management in its task, the changes being wrought by the diffusion of 
industrial ownership, and note that the American people are becoming 
the possessors of this industrial machine—not by seizure, not by statute, 
not by confiscation, but by saving and purchase (the only way by which 
men of our tradition and blood can become the owners of anything 
and hold it by right, human and divine), then I cannot be pessimistic. 

We cannot solve industrial problems and write the answers on a 
blackboard. We can only establish a tendency in human life by which 
relations between men in the common tasks of production will become 
better and better, as we become more aware of our dependence upon 
each other. Greater authority involves greater responsibility. We are 
not a small body of owners of property, exploiting a body of wage 
earners. We are becoming the common owners of productive property 
and management from its lowest to its highest forms and yesterday’s 
laborer is becoming today’s manager ! 


Our practical problem, after all, is not to play with words, but to keep 
a clear thought behind them; not thoughtlessly to revolutionize human 
relations, but to study them better in the daily, practical contacts of 
life: to see that underneath them all, whatever the field, we keep clear 
the fundamental things which shaped the nation’s life; and to find 
their existence in home, market place, factory, and church. .With faith 
that the Divinity who sustained the feeble nation in its early hours, 
will not desert it in the trials of strength, we can go forward. America’s 
future is secure for it does not rest on ships of steel, nor armies with 


59 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


bayonets, but on the omnipotence of its principles and the omnipresence 
of a tested civilization ! 3 


Discussion of Mr. Emery’s Address. 


QUESTION: ‘To what extent has the advance in wages and the larger 
distribution of industry’s profits been due to the combined thought of 
the workers or to unionized labor? 


Jas. A. Emery: I think that is somewhat difficult to estimate. The 
organization of labor has secured many distinct advantages for the 
worker. I say that, conscious of all the excesses and abuses which 
power has led it into. Abuses of power on the part of business men 
have not been uncommon either. This has always been a temptation 
of all who possessed power in every class of society, whether kings or 
parliaments, corporations or unions. Labor organizations have helped 
to make the public and employers sensitive to evils that arise in indus- 
try. They have performed in that respect a very useful service. I do 
not think they have made any distinct contribution to the increase in 
production. They have not talked nor taught nor inspired increased 
production. On the contrary, we are confronted with the fact that 
England as a nation has suffered severely from almost continuous limita- 
tion of production under the false theory that a limitation of work was 
bound to give opportunity to more people to become its beneficiaries. 
I don’t think the American worker has become a victim of that fallacy 
except in particular organizations. Our great gains in industry have 
been due to inventive genius, the practical application of invention to 
manufacture, to increased production, diversification of commodities, 
improvement in method, and the enlarged use of capital which has 
permitted labor-saving machinery of every kind rapidly to be employed, 
has put more power at the service of the worker, and has finally taken 
out of modern industry a great degree of physical exertion which was 
peculiar to the old conditions. So that today the average standard of 
living is such that the average man in this country enjoys a measure 
of life which was unknown and unimagined by the courtiers of His 
Majesty, King George III. The worker is physically no stronger than 
those who worked on the pyramids, he is not technically the superior 
of those master craftsmen who built the medieval cathedrals. 


You have to find your answer for the increase in productive power 
in the application of invention, the results of science and research, the 
constant improvement in administration and the enlarged use of capital 
which has put at the direction and service of the worker an enormous 
multiplication of the power of his hand by mechanical means. It has 
increased his earning power and buying power and has also put society 


60 


itself on a level where the per capita efficiency of the individual worker 
has been increased to the rate of 1% per cent per year. Those 
figures were given me within a week by one of the soundest of our 
industrial economists, as the result of researches just concluded 
by the National Bureau of Economic Research. And then our gain in 
national production runs along about 2 per cent per year in excess 
of population. Those results cannot be due to agitation, which does 
not administer, invent, or produce. Agitation calls attention to con- 
ditions and agencies that have brought that thing about, and then in- 
vention, science, production, transportation, and the helps put at the 
disposal of the worker, increased the service and distribution. 

C. R. Towson: It would be worth a great deal to the whole realm 
of industry if a number of thousands of men, whom you and I know, 
who are accustomed to regard the gentleman who has just spoken to us 
as an exponent of opposition to organized labor, could have heard his 
statement as to the fact that labor organizations have been beneficial, 
and then that masterful interpretation of the causes of progress which, 
while not denying the first allegation, lifts the emphasis and places it 
where it belongs. This is another illustration of how much it means to 
get together in the spirit of cooperative thought, rather than antago- 
nistic utterance, and consider together the great facts of industry and 
human relations such as we have listened to tonight, 


Bathing Beach and Boat House 


61 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


IMPROVING HUMAN RELATIONS 
IN THE TRANSPORTATION INDUSTRY | 


A. J. County 


Vice-President, Treasury, Accounting Departments and Corporate LAER G 
Pennsylvania Railroad System, Philadelphia. 


Let me compliment your committee upon its wisdom 
in choosing so delightful a spot for our conference. 
Here, surrounded by the beauties of nature, and far 
from all that reminds us of everyday business cares 
and responsibilities, we can with new inspiration dis-_ 
cuss some of the problems confronting American in- 
dustry. 

It is not only a pleasure to appear before this 
gathering, but an honor which anyone might well appreciate. In my 
own case, your invitation was doubly welcome. I have personally taken 
a keen interest in the affairs of the Y M C A for many years. I have 
long been a member and a director, and I hope have been instrumental 
in inducing others to join this institution which has for its objectives 
the development of the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual qualities 
of our young men, who are the greatest assets of the world: There 
can be no doubt as to the splendid influence which 1s so widely exerted 
by this organization among the workers in our industrial and transporta- 
tion enterprises. 


In addition to these considerations, I appreciate your invitation all 
the more warmly because it recognizes the fact that the Pennsylvania 
Railroad has been one of the leaders in dealing with problems of human 
relations in the transportation field for eighty years. There is no sub- 
ject to which our management has given, and is giving, deeper attention. 

The story of the relations between men and management in railroad- 
ing, parallels very closely the history of the same development in manu- 
facturing. Railroads, as public carriers, are entirely a product of the 
age of machinery, whereas some of the manufacturing industries are 
practically as old as mankind. The introduction of machinery, however, 
resulted in imposing upon manufacturing industries substantially the same 
cycle of changes, affecting the relations between owners, managers, and 
workers, as have been operative in the case of the railroads since their 
inception. 

If we go back about one hundred years to the first railroads in Amer- 
ica and Europe, we will find that they, like manufacturing enterprises of 
their time, were small affairs. The owners actively directed the work, 
either by personal supervision, or through a few representatives person- 


62 


ally selected. Contact between supervisory forces and workers in the 
ranks was very close. The superintendent of the early railroad division, 
like the mill superintendent of a century ago, could and often did know 
personally and individually every one of his subordinates. As long as 
that condition lasted, no labor problems of the character we have ex- 
perienced in recent years could possibly arise. However, let us not fall 
into the error of thinking that these older relations were always idealistic 
or free from disruptions and rancor. Little time was lost in discussing 
rights, but duties were insisted upon uncompromisingly or the employer 
and employe parted company. 

The era of direct contact, with its simpler relations and face to face 
dealings, passed inevitably with the growth in size of the enterprises 
devoted to manufacturing and to transportation, and with the formation 
of companies having thousands of owners instead of a few individuals. 
The superintendent of one of the larger railroad divisions of today may 
have 10,000 subordinates, representing nearly all crafts and trades, scat- 
tered over several hundred miles of trackage. As it is utterly impossible 
for him to know personally all or even the more important of them, he 
is compelled to rely upon official organization and on the contacts of 
minor supervisory officers working under him. 

As the personal touch unavoidably disappeared, owners, managers, 
and employes multiplied, and inevitably a feeling of class consciousness 
and class antagonism arose. The fundamental which has always re- 
mained, though often forgotten, is that all are engaged in some form of 
serving the public, and that this purpose cannot be adequately accom- 
plished unless men, management and owners cooperate. 

The chief problems of human relations in our time, as affecting the 
great transporation systems and manufacturing plants, have therefore 
been to find effective substitutes for that vanished personal contact be- 
tween management and men, to the end that the old feeling of unity 
and partnership, which under favorable conditions spontaneously existed 
when the enterprises were smaller, might be restored. The public will 
sustain cooperatwe relations in transportation and production, between 
men and management, but it will not sustain a dictatorship of either 
capital or labor. 

We have been engaged upon human relations work on the Pennsyl- 
vania for a long time. The same is true of other large American rail- 
road systems. Much of the work has been humanitarian in character, 
intended to foster the sense of loyalty and increase the attractiveness of 
the occupation by providing safeguards against misfortune. Most of 
it on the Pennsylvania is based upon visualizing ourselves as a big family, 
the individual members of which have spent many years in the service, 
advancing step by step, numbers becoming stockholders and officers, and 


63 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


all united by a strong sense of pride in our work, loyalty to the company, 
and duty to the public. 

In 1886 the first important measure creating a permanent organization 
for carrying on work of this kind on our railroad, was adopted by the 
establishment of our Voluntary Relief Department. The primary purpose 
of the department is to provide means whereby our employes, including 
officers and other workers of all grades, can, by the payment of moderate 
sums monthly, secure to themselves and their families cash benefits pay- 
able in the event of death, sickness, accident, or disablement, as well as 
superannuation allowances or payments supplementing the retirement 
pensions. The railroad company’s treasury bears the entire cost of oper- 
ating the department so that the dues are available, without any deduc- 
tions whatever, for the sole purpose of paying benefits and allowances. 
The protection afforded to Pennsylvania Railroad employes in this way 
was made available at a time when no other agencies existed to pro- 
vide it at reasonable rates. 

Last year, with a little over 200,000 names on our payrolls, the Relief 
Department had a membership of nearly 194,000, and distributed over 
$5,000,000 in benefits. Altogether, since its establishment, over $85,000,- 
O00 has been distributed in benefits and allowances, while the railroad’s 
treasury has contributed $15,400,000 toward carrying on the work of 
the department and administering its funds. 

One feature which has assumed great importance, is the wonderful 
medical and surgical staff maintained for the free use of any employe 
who chooses to avail himself of its services. At the head of the staff 
is a chief medical examiner and two assistants. Under them are fifty- 
three district examiners and ninety-seven assistant district examiners 
scattered through all parts of the system. This force, totaling 153, is 
composed of thoroughly competent physicians and surgeons who devote 
their entire time to employes requiring treatment. No charge whatever 
is made for their services to any Pennsylvnaia Railroad workers. 

Besides these, we retain the services of a staff of outstanding special- 
ists in practically every disease and every branch of surgery. They are 
all recognized leaders in their profession, with national and international 
reputations for the eminence of their attainments. At Philadelphia, 
Pittsburgh, Chicago, Buffalo, and New York we also retain eye special- 
ists of very high rank, to whom any employe is free to go for exam- 
ination, treatment, surgical work, or prescription for glasses. 

Our policy in maintaining this distinguished and complete medical and 
surgical force, which necessarily involves a very large expenditure, may 
be briefly explained. In the first place we wish to make sure that no 
man who develops any form of disease is allowed to continue working 
at an occupation in which the disease condition may involve danger to 


64 


himself or others. It is the job of the district medical examiners and 
their assistants to discover all such cases. We then find another job 
for the man, if that is practicable, or if he is of pensionable age, he 
is recommended for the pension roll. If below the pension age, and it is 
not possible to place him in any self-supporting railroad position at all, 
he is carried on the relief rolls and every reasonable course is followed in 
aiding him to sustain himself. We try ultimately to cure the man as 
soon as possible and get him back to his old job and full earning power. 

Our pension department, which is operated in conjunction with the 
relief work, was established in 1900, and now covers not only the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company proper, but also all of its operating subsidiaries. 
The pension rules apply impartially and uniformly to all officers and 
employes without regard to rank or duties. Retirement is compulsory 
in every case upon reaching the age of seventy years. Between the ages 
of sixty-five and seventy an employe may be retired, under certain cir- 
cumstances, if incapacitated for the proper performance of duty. 

The amount of pension paid in any case is 1 per cent of the average 
earnings of the last ten years of active service, multiplied by the total 
years of service. Thus, if a man enters the company’s employ at the age 
of twenty-five, and retires automatically at the age of seventy, he will 
have had forty-five years service to his credit. If his average earnings 
in the last ten years are $200 a month, his pension will be 45 per cent of 
$200 or $90 monthly. 

At the close of last year 8,333 retired employes were on our “Roll of 
Honor,” as we term the pension list. The payments of pensions during 
the year exceeded $4,760,000. Since the pension system was established 
in 1889, the total payments have exceeded $41,000,000, exclusive of the 
expense of operating the department. All of this has been paid by the 
company. 

It may be of further interest to know that the oldest living pensioner, 
at the close of 1925, was ninety-seven years of age, while another who 
died during the year would have reached the century mark had his life 
been prolonged a few months. 

More recently our Employes’ Provident and Loan Association has 
been organized. While its work has the approval and encouragement 
of the management, it represents a voluntary and wholly independent 
organization among the employes and officers, all of whom are eligible 
for membership. Its purpose is to encourage and provide means for 
thrift and saving on the part of our company’s working forces. 

It began by taking over the activities of the company’s previously 
existing Employes’ Saving Funds. In that capacity it affords facilities 
for regular saving deposits with interest, and means for the purchase of 
stock and other securities of the Pennsylvania Railroad and affiliated 


65 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


companies. It offers a plan for purchasing additional pension allowances 
by the payment of monthly contributions. It grants building loans to 
assist employes in the purchase of homes, and it advances other feats to 
help employes in meeting emergencies. ; 

At the close of last year the Provident and Loan Association had over 
68,000 members, of whom 53,000 had saving fund accounts, while nearly 
14,000 had purchased or were purchasing stock in the Pennsylvania to 
a total amount in excess of 62,000 shares. There were 1,230 members 
who were increasing their pensions, while building loans to the extent 
of nearly $1,700,000 were outstanding. 

About a dozen years ago another group of employes, with the approval 
of the management, but independently of any financial aid, organized the 
Mutual Beneficial Association. Its membership now is nearly 17,000. 
It provides low-rate death and disability benefits and also offers means 
for purchasing Pennsylvania Railroad securities upon instalments or other- 
wise, as well as for the cooperative buying of household supplies 
and personal necessities. Through this association, up to the close of 
1925, over 5,200 employes had purchased nearly 27,000 shares of stock. 

Combining the work of the Provident and the Mutual Beneficial Asso- 
ciation, it will be seen that through these two organizations over 19,000 
Pennsylvania employes have become stockholders in the company, and 
have bought altogether some 89,000 shares, with a total par value of 
over $4,450,000. Many other officers and employes are stockholders by 
the purchase of shares directly through brokers or banks, but no accurate 
record exists of their number. 

It is gratifying to note the increase during recent years in those who 
have become stockholders and bondholders. Ownership and working 
responsibility make splendid twins. Moreover, if close to 50 per cent 
of gross earnings are required to meet wages, is it not eminently fitting 
that some of the savings should be invested in the property from which 
they are derived? The total capital stock of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company is $500,000,000. The total payroll of the system for a single 
year is $375,000,000. Think of the possibilities which lie in the savings 
out of that latter sum! 

Another activity fostered and encouraged by our management is the 
Woman’s Aid. This is the outgrowth of an organization formed during 
the Great War by the wives and daughters of our employes and officers 
to assist the families of those who entered military service. Following 
the close of the war it was reorganized on a peace basis and its work 
greatly extended. It is now a permanent association for the purpose of 
fostering the spirit of friendship and mutual helpfulness among Penn- 
sylvania Railroad families and of rendering practical assistance where 
required. 


66 


Last year membership in the Women’s Aid was 207,320. It expended 
nearly $110,000 in relief, and its members visited 27,727 railroad fam- 
ilies, giving assistance where required in the form of money, medical 
attention, food, clothing, fuel, etc., and carrying flowers, fruits, and 
other delicacies to the sick or injured. The work of this association is 
indeed a great tribute to the devotion and unselfishness of the women 
who carry it on. 


I have already mentioned my own deep personal interest in the 
Y MCA. Our management officially endorses and encourages its rail- 
road branches and has for over forty years been an extensive con- 
tributor to the carrying on of its work on our lines. We regard it as 
having been a very important factor and a valuable medium in encour- 
aging good relations with our employes. 

It is impossible to recount the number of cooperative societies, building 
and loan associations, etc., operated chiefly for and by Pennsylvania Rail- 
road men and women; but they are an important influence for thrift and 
stability and have the approval and endorsement of our management, 
though remaining in every sense financially independent. 

Most extensive and perhaps most important of all measures for build- 
ing up harmonious relations on the Pennsylvania Railroad is our Em- 
ploye Representation Plan. Essentially it is a system of collective bar- 
gaining within our own ranks. It is based upon the settlement of all 
controversial questions regarding wages, discipline, conditions of em- 
ployment, etc., by conferences between representatives of management 
and representatives of the employes, chosen from among their own num- 
ber for that particular purpose. 

A system of appeals is arranged so that if a divisional conference 
cannot settle a question, it will go to a grand divisional conference and 
then to a conference in which the general manager of the region and his 
immediate assistants act for the management, while employes chosen as 
regional representatives act for their respective fellow workers. 

Should the general manager’s conference not result in an agreement, 
final appeal is taken to what we term our “Joint Reviewing Committees.” 
One of these committees is constituted for each group of classified em- 
ployes. Each consists of an equal number of representatives of the 
management and of the workers. They sit, not as advocates of opposing 
interests, but as impartial judicial tribunals, and a two-thirds vote is 
required for every decision. This means that in each decision rendered, 
some representatives of the management must vote with the employes, 
or vice versa. 

Out of the many thousands of cases which have arisen since our 
plan was established, a little over five years ago, in less than a half 
dozen instances have the Joint Reviewing Committees been unable to 


67 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


come to a two-thirds vote. All of these cases were, however, settled 
amicably by arbitration, for which provision is also made. 

One of the best things we can say about this plan is that it has had 
the roughest kind of tests since 1920, and works. It provides import- 
ant avenues of public information on labor questions. It gives our 
employes a democratic share in the shaping of their own conditions. 
The period during which it has been in effect has been marked by 
greatly increased efficiency and economy in operation and notable im- 
provement in our company’s financial position. It has the support and 
approval of an overwhelming majority of the employes, as well as the 
complete confidence of the management. Finally, some of its most 
important principles are recognized and embodied in the new railway 
labor act, which is applicable to all railroads, but which completely 
fits in with our plan. We regard our Employe Representation Plan 
as a permanent institution in Pennsylvania Railroad affairs. 

Our ideal is to consider all members of our entire working force, from 
trackhand to president, as constituting one great family, all engaged, 
im their respective ways, in the same indispensable public service, all 
obtaining their living from it, all contributing their individual shares to 
its successful operation, and many of them participating in the financial 
results as part owners, 

We are nearer to the realization of that ideal than ever before in our 
history, notwithstanding the troublesome and difficult days through 
which we passed during the war and immediately after. Loyalty of the 
force and friendly feeling between management and men, are at the 
highest pitch ever reached on our railroad. It is, therefore, no wonder 
that while at the close of the war operating expenses exhausted 100 
cents out of every dollar of revenue, leaving nothing for fixed charges or 
return to the stockholders, now less than 80 cents of every revenue dollar 
is sufficient to pay the expenses of operation. 

The annual turnover in the force has been reduced by about 75 per 
cent in the last few years, and is now almost entirely confined to un- 
skilled labor and to the few who are always willing to take temporary 
jobs at braking or similar occupations while preparing for other work. 
Among such men as foremen in all ranks, engineers, conductors, fire- 
men, clerical supervisors, ete., who are the backbone of the railroad, 

the turnover is practically zero. These men, almost without exception, 
look upon their occupations as life jobs. We are handling the peak 
traffic of our history, with the greatest efficiency and economy we have 
ever been able to attain, and last year we earned the dividend on our 
company’s stock more than twice over. 

In contributing to these fine results, the loyalty and devotion of the 
working forces, ably directed, were an outstanding factor and clearly 


68 


and unmistakably reflect the results of many years of cooperative effort 
im building up sound and harmonious human relations. Without claim- 
ing to have reached perfection in labor relations, our officers and di- 
rectors feel more encouragement than ever before to redouble their 
endeavors and give their best toward establishing the highest possible 
standards of ability and efficiency in the work of administering this 
great property devoted to public service. 

I doubt whether there is another very large enterprise of any kind 
in the world in which length of service and continuity of employment 
are more marked than on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Retirements 
under our pension plan are in the neighborhood of ninety per month. 
Observation shows that of those reaching the retirement age, an average 
of well over 50 percent have had forty years’ or more service, and 
nearly 10 per cent a half century or over. 


People may scoff at the capitalistic system and complain of labor diffi- 
culties in the United States, but the leaders of both capital and labor 
have learned that in unity of aim and purpose there is great prosperity, 
while in pulling apart they hurt each other and range public opinion 
against the side which creates hostility. The public is awake to the 
fact that there is no justification for strikes which require the country 
to suffer in order that settlement may be reached. All questions of per- 
sonal freedom must subordinate themselves to that fundamental truth. 

Capitalism as an economic system has become, in our country, the 
emblem of successful democracy, and has won its greatest vindication 
in the widespread prosperity and happiness of the people of the United 
States. We have our millionaires and our big corporations, but we 
have learned to appreciate and deal constructively with them, not only 
because they have been the chief factors in organizing mass production 
and distribution, and in that manner make possible widespread em- 
ployment at high wages, but also because they pay our taxes and are 
most liberal in the endowment and support of institutions of every 
kind for our benefit and for the advancement of art, science and the 
comfort of living. 

- We no longer have a capitalist class set apart from the general body 
of the population in this country. Our wage earners themselves are 
rapidly accumulating property, vast in the aggregate, and in that man- 
ner are themselves becoming capitalists, There is every desire to see 
them own their own houses, ride in automobiles, and live in comfort, 
as the reward of steady work, the use of education, and the exercise 
of thrift. They are winning their way by increased production at lower 
cost, in cooperation with wideawake management, and by wise capital 
investments and marketing. Their earnings are approximating those 
received from the professions and from independent business; and as 


69 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


economic distinctions approach the vanishing point, so do class dis- 
tinctions and jealousies. 

It has been estimated that out of twenty-five billions of dollars .in 
wages paid the workers of America each year, from six to seven billions 
are saved and become permanent capital. This helps us understand the 
development of the large and powerful savings, insurance, and similar 
institutions, several of which are now being fostered by labor groups. 
Their organizers, moreover, are to be commended for the good sense 
they have displayed in not limiting the services and facilities of these 
institutions to the members of their own crafts. Instead, they are com- 
peting for their portion of the savings of all workers and professions. 
Class distinctions have little place in banking. 

The growth of employe stockholders in railroading and other enter- 
priscs is also significant of the new social order in America. Every 
employe-stockholder has a dual relationship towards his company. He 
is both a wage earner and a partner, and as partner or part owner, he 
is to that extent his own employer. No form of government owner- 
ship can compare, as a democratic ideal, with direct ownership by the 
people themselves, and particularly by those who are gaining their live- 
lihood through the very enterprise in which they become investors. 

The rise of American wage earners to financial equality with, or in 
some cases superiority to, the so-called ‘‘white-collar” workers, carries 
with it a new responsibility. The public today will not tolerate dictator- 
ship by labor any more than by capital or management. Therefore, I 
believe we have now reached the position where wage earners, with 
their greatly increased earning power, and the practical elimination of 
the distinctions between property owning and non-property owning 
classes, must appraise their responsibilities in a new light. 

Let us consider a specific example. The gross earnings of our rail- 
roads for 157 days out of each year are required to pay their own 
wage bills. The earnings of twenty-seven more days are required for 
the costs of locomotive fuel, the vastly greater part of which repre- 
sents wages of coal miners. Seventy more days’ income are required 
for materials and supplies, representing in turn chiefly industrial 
wages. Taxes take the earnings of twenty-one days of each year and 
interest on borrowed capital, represented chiefly by bond issues, the 
earnings of forty-one days. The earnings of only nineteen days out 
of each year return to the stockholders in dividends, and the earnings 
of only six days are retained as reserves for additions and betterments, 
and to provide a credit basis. 

When we consider these figures and appreciate the overwhelming 
share of gross earnings required to meet wages, direct and indirect, 
we begin to realize the responsibility of the workers in the transporta- 


70 


tion industry toward the users of that service, and to appreciate that 
it is not inferior, in its obligations, to the responsibilities of owner- 
ship and management. 

Surely the lesson to be drawn is that, in any sane view of the situa- 
tion, strife between labor and management in railroading, or in any 
other public service or industry upon which the public ts dependent, 
has become an anachronism. There is room for common sense and 
plain dealing, but no longer any place for the selfish, “hard-boiled” 
leaders or followers who feel they can hold their places only through 
industrial warfare in our economic life, at the expense of the public. 
There is no reason or excuse for the existence of such warfare as long 
as we have intelligent public opinion, with ample resources to keep in- 
formed of the real facts upon which to reach sound conclusions. 

We have demonstrated the fallacy of the Marxian doctrines, includ- 
ing the false teaching of the inevitability of class conflict and the 
equally erroneous one that under the capitalist system wealth tends to 
segregate itself into the hands of a few inordinately rich individuals at 
the expense of ever-growing poverty among the masses. 

America is today the living refutation of these doctrines. Instead 
of suffering from the growth of class conflict, we are soundly basing 
our national hopes and aspirations upon processes visibly at work be- 
fore our eyes, which, on the one hand, are completing the practical 
elimination of class lines altogether, and on the other are opening 
wide to every one of normal capacity and intelligence the door of 
entry into the capitalist or property-owning status. Instead of the 
concentration of wealth into a few hands, which Marx and his fol- 
lowers held to be inevitable under capitalism, we are witnessing the 
most remarkable and extensive popular distribution of wealth in all of 
history, and to an extent which no one would have deemed possible a 
generation ago. 

But in our just enthusiasm over the wonderful gains in material wel- 
fare and happiness which have come to the mass of our people, let us 
not make the error of forgetting that our advance has not been wholly 
or exclusively materialistic. Heroism and self-sacrifice in all ranks of 
life were never more generally manifest in the history of any nation. 
This is no time to be cynical, to stand aloof, to decry our own age, or 
to lament the supposed superior virtues of past eras. Religion, learn- 
ing, art, science, charity, and the spiritual resources to advance those 
ideals and practices which make life worth living in its moral, aesthettc, 
and intellectual aspects, were never so prevalent nor better known, Never 
was the call clearer that these inward forces be evoked as an inspiration 
for all our people. 

Leadership in all these provinces of achievement must be made equal 


71 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


to the demand, and when and where that condition is found, the com- 
mon people follow gladly. Those who can reach the head and heart 
with leadership and a message of faith, hope, and real inspiration have 
no doubt or uncertainty but that the Kingdom of God begins here on 
this earth. — 

These are our heritages, spiritual and material, here in America. They 
are the most valuable that have ever come to any people. It is the 
duty of every one of us, both as a public and a moral obligation, and in 
the highest and most intelligent self-interest, to work unitedly and 
wholeheartedly for their preservation and protection. 


Discussion of Mr. County’s Address. 


J. C. Crark, Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., New York, N. Y.: 
I would like to ask Mr. County about the administration of the relief 
department, on the Pennsylvania. I think it is rather unique. 

A. J. County: There again we have the duality of both men and 
management. We have a regular ballot for the employes to elect one- 
half of the Advisory Committee or managers of the relief department. 
The balance are selected by the management, as the company guar- 
antees the Relief Fund. If the voters of this country would ever 
cast the same percentage of ballots as the men do for the employes 
who are going to represent them in the relief department, it would be 
a perfect country. Ninety or ninety-five per cent of the members vote. 
The Advisory Committee or directors, jointly chosen, represent the em- 
ployes and the management. I am one of the representatives selected 
on behalf of the management. We get together, talk over our cases, 
our regulations, our investments, and the results. 

Another thing we do is this: In every big family such as ours, either 
because of our foreign born or for other reasons, we don’t know how 
to take care of ourselves; we have not all gotten that far. It is the job 
of some of our representatives to go around and see why the man didn’t 
turn up at work; whether the medical examiner has given him the proper 
attention; what has gone wrong with the grocer, the doctor, and so on, 
and what is happening to the children. We have been trying to work 
out the duality of family life and management since 1886. We, by vote, 
rotate this Advisory Committee and in that way I think we are helpful. 

J.C. Crark: I-have been told that the employe representatives, elected 
by the employes, spend all their time in this relief department, and that 
their salaries are paid by the Pennsylvania. 

A. J. County: We have fifty men engaged in this service. It is the 
men’s money and their management, but we guarantee it. If we don’t 
allow .time the work will not be done; we could be criticized for that. 


72 


We do allow time and no doubt are criticized for that also. The main 
point is the work is well done. 

The men’s pay goes on and they are standing in the company just as 
if in active daily work. It is a nice thing to get out of the shop or office 
for a spell and act on the board of representation. Expenses come from 
the company’s treasury, so that all the employes’ contributions can be 
used for their protection. 

F. L. Ricc, Gutta Percha and Rubber, Ltd., Toronto, Canada: Are 
pensions, paid to those who are retired, guaranteed by the establishment 
of a fund independent of the future of the railroad? 

A. J. County: Not up to the present. In that connection a great 
development has occurred. This fund has become so great that we have 
determined to establish a permanent fund to assure everyone who is 
placed on that pension list of getting his pension during his life. Now 
to make that clearly understood, with the men whom we put on the 
pension roll we say, “Here is a pension during your lifetime. There 
is not a bit of obligation about it beyond one year.” But the man- 
agement desires to make secure all pensions when once granted, so 
we have placed the matter before the Interstate Commerce Commission 
and have asked for its authority to establish a fund. We found out that 
the average man’s life is ten or twelve years after pension, and we 
wanted to set up a fund and make charges against operating expenses 
for, say, ten years’ of pension for each employe who is pensioned. We 
cannot make the expense charge until the commission approves. 

This is a responsibility. Do not undertake a pension plan unless you 
are willing to put up pensions for ten years for each employe. Look it 
straight in the face—it is no joke. I expect that pension fund of ours 
will go up to ten or more millions a year. 

Cuas. R. Towson: If the Pennsylvania Railroad, when it inaugurated 
this pension plan, had been-confronted with the magnitude of the obliga- 
tion which would come after twenty-seven years, would it have created 
the fund at that time? And was it better for you to have gone ahead 
and established the fund, even on a non-actuarial basis, or to have waited 
until later and established it upon this basis which you now contemplate? 

A. J. County: In the railroad business you are right here on earth 
and dealing with human and not divine nature. You begin a great many 
things you don’t see the end of, and we would do it again only with this 
difference: we would from the very start put in, if we knew the average 
would be ten or twelve years, a proper amount in the operating expenses, 
and establish a fund. 

Cuas. R. Towson, Deering Milliken and Co, New York, N. Y.: 
Suppose you were not in a financial position to do that, would you have 
established the fund and gone along? 


73 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


A. J. County: You cannot very well say that, but here is what 
happened at the time: Without a pension fund we would have had cases 
before the board of directors every month. It would have been heart- 
rending. When I came into the business we used to pass the hat when 
a fellow died; thus we had our own little fund, but not on a scientific 
basis. Then we said to ourselves that a pension fund should help not 
only old John Smith, but should attract the younger men to railroad 
service. 

Something has been mentioned about constructive pensions, and 
here is the plan we usually follow: Suppose we are shut down by lack 
of business tomorrow; these things occur over night. We have a plan 
whereby a man is continued as a regular employe for nine months. 
But no matter what his condition during the closing ten years of his life, 
his pension in the occupation is rated on a constructive wage basis; 
because, otherwise, a man who had a high position after serving fifty 
years might receive less than a man not half so far advanced while in 
active service. 

QUESTION: Would you say that the Pennsylvania Railroad plan is 
democratic ? 

A. J. County: It is absolutely up to the men to do as they wish, 
through our Employe Representation Plan. We asked the employes: 
“Will you put up these questions to Employe Representation?” The 
majority answered yes, but some preferred outside Unions. There is 
nothing to prevent union men from being elected on any of our Employe 
Representation Boards, except they must be Pennsylvania employes ! 

There are three great essentials in this world: God, nature, and human 
nature, and unless you get straight with them you will never get anywhere. 

When you get these things in your head, the distinction of whether 
you are in unions or out of unions doesn’t make any difference. What 
are you? Are you in favor of loyalty all the time, although there may 
be differences of opinion? Then we can do something. But if you are 
not, I don’t care whether you call yourself a unionist or non-unionist. 
You are not an American citizen. A labor leader may not talk the same 
as I talk—he has a job to maintain—but he is everlastingly right with 
me, if he has the fundamentals right, if he acts from loyalty, free from 
those principles that will pull our men and the world down. Do not 
imagine for a minute that we have reached the saturation point in this 
thing. My plea is that we have reached a basis so sound that, if we 
will only adhere to it and get a proper return on these railroads, we can: 
raise wages. We can do much better for railroad men than we are 
doing today if in service we get value for pay. If the men and manage- 
ment will hold together, we will hold the public and the country together 
by good service. The American public will pay for satisfactory service, but 


74 


you won't get anywhere with the American public by making it suffer 
and making it pay the bills just the same. 


G. E. PELLIissier, Holyoke Street Railway Company, Holyoke, Mass. : 
I believe that we must find a method of reestablishing the personal touch 
and I feel that management, in spite of the fact that st has stated 
that it is too busy for personal contacts, may well delegate some of the 
mechanical work to subordinates and devote time to giving inspiration 
to the men under st. 


A. J. County: We have a railroad in thirteen states, employ two 
hundred thousand men, and yet we are trying to maintain personal con- 
tact. What are the Employe Representation plan, the Provident and 
Loan Association, and the Relief Fund, for? When I sit with men in 
the relief department and talk about John Smith’s case, that is one way 
we are establishing personal contacts and getting the message across. 
Why do I talk to foremen at their meetings? Why am I wondering 
what is going on in the various shops when there is a turnover of 10 
per cent in one and of only 5 per cent in another. 

HARRINGTON EMERSON, Efficiency Counselor, New York, N. Y.: 
What is the permanence of employment on the Pennsylvania Railroad ? 
How many men are with you at the end of a year who were there at the 
beginning? 

A. J. County: Practically all of the men stay with us. The turnover 
is practically nil except in unskilled labor, and the jobs that go up and 
down. - We have been watching this for two years. I found some em- 
ployes in New York in the clerical forces, in the freight stations, that 
were not staying. I asked, “Why is the turnover here so larger” I 
wondered what was the trouble—whether they didn’t have the right men, 
or the right working quarters, or human sympathy. But I was told that 
those fellows get a start at the freight station, and it prepares them for 
other jobs in other businesses. I was told, “Under the impetus of the 
thing you always preach, these fellows are not going to stay freight 
clerks forever.” That is America; they want to go higher. 

In 1923, 1924, and 1925 we found that there was little turnover except 
in some of these unskilled jobs. We are doing everything in our power 
to reduce turnover, realizing that the money we spend to train a man 
is lost, if we have to change him or if he keeps changing frequently. 

Troe WaTeR Oi, Company DELEGATE: How about physical exam- 
ination ? 

A. J. County: The employe has to pass a physical examination first. 
We are very careful about it, because there again you lose your effort 
and lose your man if he becomes sick. Therefore, we try to secure as 
many young and active men as we can, but it is becoming harder to get 


75 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


them for the heavier grades of work. People don’t like dirty, heavy 
work today. | 

HARRINGTON EMERSON: If a man has been with you up to the age 
of sixty-five and then you have to fire him, does that deprive him of 
all pension? 

A. J. County: No, sir.. At the age of sixty-five he is eligible for 
pension. But we wouldn’t fire him anyway, because it would be hurting 
ourselves when hurting him. Our pension board and management 
wouldn’t have it done. 


Movie Screen in Front of Hotel 


AMERICAN INDUSTRY 


AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 
P. Whitwell Wilson 


Former member of British Parliament, author, expert on world affairs. 


While the United States has no Empire, she has a 
Monroe Doctrine. And under that Doctrine, she ex- 
ercises a diplomatic influence in North and South 
America and the Philippines which affects 200,000,000 
persons of the human race. She is the Big Brother 
of Latin America. The British Commonwealth of 
- nations is on its side inclusive of 400,000,000 persons, 

ha figures which I mention not as propaganda but merely 
as arithmetic. The population of this planet is 1,700,000,000 or there- 
abouts. And this means that between them, the United States and 
Britain guide the diplomacy of more than one-third of the human race, 
and on the whole, the richest third. 

We have no right to dominate the world or to suppose that we are 
better than French, Germans, Russians or Italians—nations which have 
taught us how to read, to paint pictures, sing songs, to think out prob- 
lems of life and even to worship God. But there ts one service that 
we can render. It is to throw our whole influence on the side of peace. 
Usually we have our mutual differences. Yesterday it was Ireland; 
today, some people are talking about the debt. But on the whole we 
are not such bad friends after all. Both nations listen to Will Rogers 
and both nations laugh at Buster Keaton. And it takes an American 
girl to swim the English Channel! 

But what we have now to think of is not our agreements or disagree- 
ments but our common duty to the rest of the human race—to China, 
a Republic struggling slowly and painfully to her feet; to Japan and 
Russia, at loggerheads over Manchuria as once they were rivals for 
Korea; to Russia, where liberty has still to be established; to Europe, 
not yet united; to India where Moslems and Hindus cannot yet cooperate 
in common citizenship; and last but not least to Africa where the Negro 
is at last finding himself for the first time. 

In listening to these discussions of the Industrial Conference, I have 
been amazed at the good sense and fine temper displayed. The old 
world had its feudal system in which nations were ruled by barons 
who owned the land. That feudal system has been shattered. But in 
its place, we see an industrial system just as powerful. Delegates are 


here present who exercise an influence over human life as great as any 
that was ever exercised by a duke or a marquis. One speaker told 


77 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


you that the United States has no hereditary principle. We had a prime 
minister who used to say—‘‘Wait and see!’ England had no hereditary 
principle when she was a hundred and fifty years old! Then we have 
had preached what I may call the “gospel of getting on.’ And I only 
wish that I had heard it a little earlier in life. But what was it that 
a representative of a great firm of meat packers told us? Here is a 
corporation in which capital and labor are represented in common council 
and vote as a unit—which I thought was only true of the Democratic 
Convention! Yet wages, he said, were 41 cents an hour, or about ,22 
dollars a week. It shows that industry also requires=the man who 
doesn’t get on. ie 

The real problem is not how to help a man to be promoted. Such 
promotion is one of those duties in life in which a man can help him- 
self. The real problem is the unpromoted man. He used to be an 
immigrant. He came from Africa, from Ireland, from Eastern Europe. 
But you now have immigration laws which make this country, as I tell my 
English friends, a very nice place when once you get inside. And it seems 
to me that to preach the doctrine that success is to be measured by 
promotion is a pretty dangerous thing to do. It leaves nine out of ten 
citizens inevitably disappointed. It is responsible for crime, which is 
not due, in the main, to drink (for there is now no drink in the United 
States!) or even to gambling. The bandit is often an affectionate hus- 
band and an anxious father who is in too great a hurry to be promoted. 
As Mr. Emery put it, he is “the industrial Arab who folds his Ford 
and silently steals away!” It is of no use to teach the people to put their 
trust in riches. St. Paul says ‘I have learned in whatever state I am 
therein to be content—both to abound and to suffer need.” 

In Britain, there was a general strike and it was a monstrous 
folly. But do not forget that, in that titanic struggle, not a life was 
lost. Britain has an income tax which, for my income, is a dozen 
times higher than what I pay here. Yet Britain is on the whole happy. 
The man I admire is the man who is cheerful, not when he is promoted, 
but when he loses his job. He is the real hero. And the true test of 
your industrial optimism will be when bad years come. In your great 
anthem “America, the Beautiful,’ you sing of “alabaster cities” which 
“sleam undimmed by human tears.” Yet we know that, in all these 
cities, there is an abundance of reason for human tears. What we cele- 
brate as the patriots’ dream, therefore, should become for all of us the 
citizens’ duty—not to deny the sorrow but to comfort the sorrowful, 
and better still to prevent sorrow. 

That people are saving money is splendid. And industrial insurance 
like that in force on the Pennsylvania Railroad is admirable. In Bri- 
tain, the entire nation is thus insured—that is 16,000,000 workers, from 


78 


sixteen to about seventy years of age. ‘The nation is insured against sick- 
ness, old age, widowhood, tuberculosis, and, of course, we have to find 
money for wounded soldiers and soldiers’ dependents. A billion and 
a half of dollars are paid every year in such schemes, and to them, all 
contribute — sometimes by taxes, sometimes by direct dues collected 
from wages and capital. We do not consider that this is Socialism. 
Industries are left in private hands. But the proper care of the unfor- 
tunate has become a first charge on industry and wealth. 

In these days, industry is based broadly on a forty-eight-hour week. 
And we talk sometimes as if the factory and what goes on inside it 
is the whole of life. Every week, there are 120 hours spent by the 
workers outside the factory altogether. A good housewife gets through 
her housework and has the rest of the day to herself. So should it be 
with the wage earner. We used to have the leisured classes. We now 
have the leisured masses. A publisher gave me three reasons why 
he could not sell more of my books. First, there was the movie; 
second, the radio; and third, the automobile. All of these alternatives 
to reading are more expensive than books would have been. The British 
worker has to be content without the automobile. Of course, he still has 
the saloon and the race course. But he is also devoted to his garden when 
he can get one. He takes a keen interest in politics, he stands as a candi- 
date for his town council, sometimes goes into Parliament and teaches in 
the Sunday school. He still rides a bicycle. 

Mass production is all very well. But what about God? While we 
try to make everything the same, He made everything different. Take 
ladies’ dresses. Why should the manufacturer have the right to say 
how long a dress should be? Why should Liberty be only a statue? 
In England, there is a good reason why we don’t always apply mass 
production. Our trade is largely international. We did ten billions 
worth of foreign trade last year—and you—with your vast domestic 
consumption—only did 9 billions overseas. Now mass production may 
one day master the world but, at the moment, the British find that they 
have to adapt their products to varied markets in China, India, and else- 
where. It is not deficiency in enterprise that retards their mass pro- 
duction but the differing fashions of their customers. 

We have been hearing about bond selling to operatives on the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad and other great corporations. I agree that such dis- 
tribution of investments is the real answer to Communism. The Rus- 
sian peasant is a bad Bolshevist because he owns his farm. And so is 
it in Lancashire, England, where the cotton operatives, though unionized, 
have invested largely in the plants where they are employed. 

Do not underestimate enterprise outside your own borders. Take 
Belfast, in Ireland. There was no wood, linen, iron, or coal—only a 


719 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


vacant shore and a few Scotsmen. And yet they have built up a vast 
production of shipping, linen, and tobacco. ‘The real fault in the British 
system has been to calculate finance by rates of wages instead of by 
the cost of the unit produced. It has not been realized that the low 
price of a product may actually result from the high wages of the 
worker ! 

All nations recognize the amazing achievement of the United States 
in industry. Your wealth, calculated at 80 billions in 1900, is now 320 
billions. It has been quadrupled. And your gold reserve is half the 
total gold reserve of the world. Such a reserve is like radium—it in- 
fluences all around it. It is, in fact, a source of credit. And you are 
investing vast sums abroad. Where your treasure is, there—be very 
sure—will your politics be also. And it is a good thing. One speaker 
declared that with 7 per cent of the population of the world, you 
produce 41 per cent-of the steel. It means that, compared with the 
United States, the world is as yet undeveloped. In China, for instance, 
coolies still carry coal and water on their backs. To develop the world, 
is thus a great opportunity. Compared with the steel required for 
bridges, railroads, girders, and machinery, what, after all, is the economic 
value of the steel used in guns and battleships? At Geneva, the League 
of Nations translated the word “peace” into three others words, “arbitra- 
tion,” “security,” and “disarmament”; I would spell the word “peace” in 
two words—“commerce” and. “Christianity.” The composer Handel pro- 
duced his music for a small orchestra. So did Christ produce his Gospel 
for a little group of disciples. But just a Handel’s music sounds the more 
majestic with every instrument added to the orchestra, so does the 
Cause of Christ grow in grandeur as it is interpreted in great machines 
and organizations, serving the needs of man. 


Discussion of Mr. Wilson’s Address. 


DELEGATE: What is the effect of the social insurance program in 
England? : 

P. W. Witson: I don’t think the death rate has ever been so low 
as at present. I am not sure that this is due entirely to sickness insur- 
ance, because, of course, the death rate in this country has been brought 
to a very low level also. 

With regard to unemployment, it has been suggested that men who 
have been receiving unemployment benefits, say, five or six dollars a 
week, do not feel any great desire to take a harder job at ten dollars 
a week. I think that is true in some instances and particularly in the 
cases of men who served in the war, were demobilized, and have never 
returned to industry. They have been out of work during the formative 
years of their life. But taken as a whole, I don’t believe even unem- 


80 


ployment insurance has been the reason for the continuance of unem- 
ployment. It has been due-to large causes, particularly this: that in 
shipbuilding, iron trades, and coal mines Great Britain has for a time 
been unable to produce at a European price. You hear of the Ameri- 
can price for these things. We have to produce at the price which 
will meet competition in Belgium and Europe as a whole. 

J. M. Groves, Y M C A, New Haven: Is Britain really committed 
to the idea that the wage scale must be radically changed and that high 
wages are in some sense the secret of prosperity? 

P. W. WiLson: At one of the sessions here it was suggested that high 
wages are of great importance, for they enable the workers to spend 
the wages and therefore to act as a home market. Now, I think that 
is a very important argument, but I think that the argument which 
now is getting over to England, is this: that high wages actually may 
result in a low cost of production. ‘They are all reading the “autobi- 
ography” of Henry Ford, and absorbing the idea that industry should 
be arranged not according to the wages paid but according to the cost 
of the unit produced. 

'The essential difference between that country and this is that you, 
rightly or wrongly, are able to establish a natural tariff, but in Britain 
they always have to face the price in the neutral market. There is 
always 20, 30, or 40 per cent of output which has to meet international 
competition, and therefore price is to them an actual essential, whereas 
to you it may or may not be. 

M. J. Sticket, Y M C A, Long Island City: There are two ques- 
tions. First, what is the immediate future of competition for our in- 
dustries here, so far as Europe is concerned? | 

Second, I should like to have you elaborate the statement that it would 
take one hundred years to absorb the production of our industries if 
all countries were thoroughly industrialized. 

P. W. Witson: I am ready to hazard a guess that you are going to 
be faced by serious competition, and for this reason: that if Europe 
settles down and gets on a business basis, of course, obviously, she will 
want to supply her own markets. That is happening in Italy under 
Mussolini, who, whatever you think of his dictatorship as an alterna- 
tive to democracy, has beyond all doubt cleaned up Italy. It is true 
of France and of Germany. And certainly, Britain, successfully or un- 
successfully, is absolutely bound to compete with everybody if she 1s 
is going to live. 

Now my friend wanted me to elaborate my statement that it would 
take one hundred years to develep this world. If he will allow me to 
say so, that statement is not to be regarded as exact economics but 
rather as made under rhetorical necessity. My own belief is that the 


81 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


development of the world is so vast a task and a task so long delayed that 
it will occupy us all for more than a hundred years. When you create one 
need, that need creates another need. When you exhaust one source 
of power, you discover another source of power. ‘There is limitless 
work for mankind in the form of mutual service, which is represented 
by industry. 

F. L. Rices, Gutta Percha and Rubber, Limited, Toronto: There 
is a rather general impression here that industry is in very bad shape 
in England, that there is practically no work. Is it not true that the 
production in England today is greater, and that more men are working 
there than before the War? 

P. W. Witson: Beyond all question there are more at work in England 
than ever before in her history. The reason for that is that despite 
the War, the population has increased, not by immigration but by natural 
growth. And the many unemployed merely represent the army that 
we have not succeeded in demobilizing, and the five or six million 
people who are employed on munitions. 

It may interest you to know that the number of domestic servants in 
England before the War was one and one half million. Owing to taxation, 
to which I have referred, there are only a million now. There are five 
hundred thousand fewer domestic servants. And those men and women 
have somehow had to be included in the totals. So that really we have 
not done so badly, because we always did have three or four hundred 
thousand unemployed normally. 

ProFessor H. B. Hastincs, Yale University: Mr. Wilson has the 
keenness of observation that the English so often portray, and has indi- 
cated the difference in the industrial order of today and that of a decade 
ago; and that is, that the industrial order of a decade ago pointed with 
self-satisfaction at the office boy who worked up to be president of the 
company, whereas today industry is thinking of the other 99 per cent 
of the men who cannot be promoted. 

H. G. TRAvEr, Traver Engineering Company, Beaver Falls, Pa.: Do 
you think the time will come when we will so understand and control 
industry, that we shall be able to use all of our people and equipment, 
without having the occasional depressions and the occasional large num- 
ber of unemployed such as you have in England at present? 

P. W. Witson: Yes, probably, on one or two conditions: First, that 
the peace of the world continues; and second, that you have what I 
believe you do have in this country, a wise system of banking. Is it 
not a fact, that since the establishment of the Federal Reserve System 
there has been a very much more steady application of finance to the 
real needs of industry than there was before the Federal Reserve System 
was established? IT must confess that I think the competition between 


82 


nations is beginning to give way before the habit that we all have of 
investing in each other’s country. You have enormous investments 
in Canada and in Europe; and really, finance is becoming in the 
best sense of the word, international. And the old idea that one country 
had to compete against another is really giving way before the idea that 
people should cooperate. 

Rev, E. M. Wytist, Montclair, N. J.: Are we not in danger, by 
piling up great gold reserves in this country, of hurting our international 
relations? Is it not possible to carry it on until we endanger economic 
stability, and therefore industry? If that be the case, what remedy can 
you suggest ? 

P. W. Witson: My friend has put a very serious question. He has 
suggested that the accumulation of a great gold reserve in this country 
may have two results—first, it may endanger international relations and 
arouse a certain jealousy toward this country ; and second, it may actually 
give this country too much gold and may overweight the financial 
structure. 

It is, of course, a fact that in Europe, even in England, there is today 
a certain amount of discussion of the United States. Some of it I 
think is unfair. But it arises out of a very human situation. Europe 
has been the leader of the human race. It was in Europe that you had 
the Roman Empire; and now she sees the economic balance passed 
across the ocean, and she knows that to a considerable degree it is her 
own fault. You cannot expect old and proud countries to like it. I 
think you must anticipate that there will be a certain amount of peevish- 
ness on the other side, and if you try to put yourself in the position of 
those countries, I think you will feel that it is entirely natural. There 
are a great many economists who consider that the accumulation of gold 
in this country will be embarrassing to American finance, unless a good 
use can be made of it. That is one reason why those economists really 
doubt whether the collection of the debts is going to be an entire benefit 
to the United States. That is a matter, of course, solely for the United 
States to decide for itself. But the fact of your gold reserves gives you 
an opportunity for establishing credits all over the world. You are 
becoming economically an international power in that sense. 

Howarp WILLIAMS, Business Training Corporation, New York, N. Y.: 
In England, there is a more penetrating analysis of the questions at issue 
at every election than in America. Is that true because of an older 
culture, a more homogeneous population, or because the working people 
are more vibrant-minded ? 

P. W. Witson: I rather hoped I avoided comparisons of that kind, but 
undoubtedly in Great Britain you have people who have lived together 
for quite a number of years, and over here you are, if you will allow me 


83 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


to say so, still making a nation. You are still bringing in new citizens 
and you have many difficulties of race, of language, or origin, still to 
deal with. You have the difficulty of distance, the isolation of great 
centers of population, one from the other, and it is no “matter for 
surprise that there has been an immense task to hold your political system 
together and to develop it. I cannot but feel that with five hundred 
thousand American boys and girls at college, at any particular moment, 
you are training leadership which is bound to become increasingly| 
effective. America is better governed today than she was five years ago. 
Every year there is a marked improvement in the administration of this 
country, and that is due to the fact that the citizens are talking over 
these things and getting together, and are gradually bringing even the 
remote parts of the country into an orderly relation with the whole stock. 

It seems to me you have problems to face here which we do not 
have in any Eurepean country, and J am sure you are going to face 
them squarely and have the wisdom to solve them. 


Free Parking Space! 


84 


SOME APPRECIATIONS 


The Hampton Quartet: P. Whitwell Wilson, expert on world 
affairs : , 

I have been asked to express, if I can, our appreciation to members 
of the Hampton Quartet for the music which they have given us. They 
have sung the songs of their own race, songs which remind us of the 
deep sorrow through which it has passed, and of the Friend who helped 
through the period of servitude. This quartet represents a notable chap- 
ter in the history of mankind. 

After the Civil War the future of the Negro was the problem to be 
solved. Some people talked about repatriation to Africa, others of 
segregation. Both those solutions would have been unjust and obviously 
impossible. You had a division between North and South. The North 
said equality, the South questioned whether that was possible. And then 
there arose a great man, General Armstrong, who used neither of those 
words, equality or inequality, but education. And Hampton Institute 
in Virginia, followed by Tuskegee, was the result. A particular kind of 
education. How was it that Christ was educated? By the bench of 
the carpenter and the Bible, the hand and the brain. And that dual 
education is what has produced the graduates of Hampton. 

The system developed at Hampton of training the whole being has 
spread to the world. In India recently an educational commission to the 
villages reported that the Hampton method was the right one. In China 
there was a committee of inquiry consisting of Chinese, Americans, 
and British, and it also reported that Hampton’s was the method. Into 
Africa itself this country has recently sent two commissions, and the 
Hampton method is being suggested as a solution to the African problem. 

Some say that education only intensifies race rivalry. The answer 1s, 
not the right kind of education. The bigger the man, whatever his race, 
the more easily can he look over the frontiers that divide the races. In 
the South the difficult and dangerous questions between the races are 
being discussed by inter-racial committees the influence of which has 
already mitigated much violence and has contributed to social peace and 
order. 

It was felt that some such word should be said in friendship and 
brotherly feeling to those who have come from a distance in order to 
enrich with their music the very delightful proceedings of this Con- 
ference. 


Silver Bay: Chas R. Towson, President, Silver Bay Association : 


I am tempted under the inspiration of Mr. Wilson’s presentation, and 
because of emotions stirred in my heart by these brethren who have sung 


85 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


for us, to take this half minute of my time to say that we have rarely 
if ever enjoyed finer music. I know you will join me in hoping that 
Hampton Institute is going to have increasing success and financial 
support. 

(Mr. Towson then described some of the year-round activities of the 
Silver Bay Association, including the various conferences during the 
summer months, and the unique School for Boys, during the winter. ) 
This school which is distinctively Christian in its purpose, principles 
and training takes boys from twelve to eighteen giving them a high 
grade preparation for a college course and a most valuable and inter- 
esting correlation of classroom theory and outdoor practical work. Every 
boy is treated as an individual, close attention being given to his schol- 
astic needs, his character and his health and physical development. The 
school is not operated for profit. 

(Mr. Towson concluded by remarking that almost every state and 
country in the world had been represented at Silver Bay this year and 
introduced Robert French, Principal of the Silver Bay School for Boys 
and William Fellowes Morgan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of 
Silver Bay Association. ) 


The Conference Spirit: Fred H. Rindge, Jr., Secy. Industrial Depart- 
ment, Y M C A National Council; Executive Secretary of the 
Conference: 


(Mr. Rindge here expressed appreciation to the Conference Committee, 
speakers, musicians, office force, ““white badge men,” the hotel manage- 
ment, etc., for their fine cooperation in making the Conference possible. 
He then continued :) 

If we have derived any real benefit from this Conference may we not 
do four things? First, stay through to the end; second, endeavor to 
make effective the ideas and ideals of this Conference in the factories 
and cities from which we have come; third, send in to our New York 
office frank suggestions for the improvement of the Conference next 
year. And last but not least, all come again and bring others whom 
you know ought to be here. That will certainly insure a conference in 
1927 which will be the best ever! 

We will all take away with us certain impressions. I recall one indelible 
picture of last night, when some of us gathered for a little social occasion. 
There was an outdoor fireplace surrounded by a group composed of the 
Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the General Counsel of the 
National Association of Manufacturers, a former member of the British 
Parliament, chairmen of boards of directors and presidents of great 
corporations, and other men of that type, with working men right out 
of some of the plants and railroads, and all were roasting “hot dogs” 


86 


together around the fire! That may be a very crude illustration but I am 
sure such social, friendly, personal contacts will really mean something 
in the larger life of. industry in the days ahead. 

We want to thank you for your very fine cooperation in making 
possible what we have had here! 


A Memory Lane 


87 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


LABOR’S VIEWPOINT 
Matthew Wall 


Vice-President, Amerstcan Federation of Labor, Washington 


It had been the hope and the happy anticipation of 
William Green, President of the American Federation 
of Labor, until yesterday afternoon, of appearing here 
this evening in person and of presenting to you as 
president of the great American Labor Movement its 
ideas and ideals, its attitudes and concepts regarding 
Bt our industrial, social, economic, and political life, as 
well our industrial relations. However, affairs in Montreal, in pre- 
paration for the coming Convention of the American Federation of 
Labor, made it impossible for him to leave. He asked me, at the last 
minute, to take his place, and endeavor to present that message to you. 
I was very happy to respond and am greatly delighted to be with you 
under these most pleasant circumstances and in this most happy environ- 
ment. But I do want to convey the keen and profound regret of 
President Green because of his inability to be with you, and likewise to 
voice his hope that the future may afford him the opportunity of ful- 
filling the engagement which he sincerely intended to fulfil this evening. 

Addressing myself to the subject of our industrial life, and endeavor- 
ing to express the ideas and ideals, the hopes and purposes of the Labor 
Movement, it is quite difficult to single out any one particular subject 
without danger of minimizing the importance of other subjects. For, 
after all, our industrial life is so interwoven with our social and political 
life, that one cannot well deal with one without involving the others. 

But particularizing upon labor relationships let us first of all under- 
stand that the American trade union movement differs essentially and 
fundamentally from all European labor movements, in_ philosophy as 
well as in practice. That is understandable if we reflect briefly upon 
the development of the industrial, social, and political life of the European 
countries as compared with life in our country. 

This nation was born at a time when a silent revolution was taking 
place in all the older countries. At that. time we, a young adven- 
turous people, with an abundance of natural wealth, and with wild- 
ness confronting us so that only individual initiative and enterprise 
could master the environment and circumstances of that time, naturally 
developed principles and attitudes not to be found among the peoples of 
Europe who had been laboring for centuries under prejudices, customs, 
and traditions. 

But in our labor movement in America we have never fallen subject, 


88 


we believe, to the errors abroad. We have never accepted the philoso- 
phy of hopelessness about the present social, economic, and political fiber 
of our nation and the nations of the world. The labor movement from 
the very beginning has established itself upon principles of government 
that have made our nation the greatest republic and the most wonderful 
democracy in the world and of all times, founded upon the ideals of 
equality of man, private property, personal initiative and adventure, as 
the trinity of principles that make for progress and advancement in the 
human family; founded further upon the idea that it ts not the state, 
but the individual within the state, that ts the sovereign power, and that 
governments ought not to intrude themselves in the affairs of man more 
than is essential to permit fair play and equality of opportunity. 

Those principles and doctrines, as you well know, are not accepted 
in the European labor movements where almost invariably it is believed 
that the present so-called capitalistic order is intended for the enrichment 
of but a few and for the enslavement of many, and if equality is to prevail 
in the human family, then the whole social fabric must be destroyed. A 
new social fabric then would take its place, wherein private property, 
private initiative, and personal adventure would be unknown and wherein 
the state would be the all-powerful, all-dominating influence controlling not 
only the industrial but also the political, economic, and social activities 
of the people. 

European schools, primarily founded upon the Karl Marxian theory, 
just the other extreme of the Adam Smith theory of economics, hold 
forth no hope to the wage earner unless all of the principles that have 
made for our development are thrown aside and unless socialism becomes 
the order of the peoples. 

In America we have never accepted that doctrine, which has manifested 
itself in a more severe and violent form now recognized under the title 
of communism. This ultimately is nothing more or less than socialism, 
but secures its name by the different method of approach in accomplish- 
ing the ideals sought. 

American labor has not only refused to accept those doctrines and 
follow those principles, but it has been compelled to meet the propa- 
ganda which has been going on among American wage earners to instill 
that thought and to force those principles into their minds. Jn combating 
this philosophy, in opposing this revolutionary doctrine, in standing firm 
to the principles that have made for our greatness, socially, politically, 
-industrially, I feel confident that the American Labor Movement has 
performed a great, everlasting, and impressive public and patriotic service. 

It is true that, with the development of the American Trade Union 
Movement, activities have been engaged in, procedures have been fol- 
lowed, which might not have been altogether commendatory and which, 


89 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


judged by standards of morality and justice, should not have prevailed. 
But let us understand that the wage earner, like the colored man, has 
risen from slavery to freedom, as was justifiably said on this platform 
tonight. The wage earner has come from slavery to freedom and 
aquality, politically, and only within a comparatively short time equality, 
socially, and just recently to equality in industral life. In these actvities 
all fair-minded people might not commend some things, and yet let us 
realize that the struggle of life is indeed a struggle and those seeking to 
uplift themselves have not always at their command the methods, oppor- 
tunities, or even the ability or knowledge to conform to these higher 
standards of ethics. 

I say this not in apology for the labor movement, because the same 
might be said of every other cause. History tells us that the greatest 
of all movements for the improvement of mankind, the Christian move- 
ment, born under humble circumstances, at times followed practices 
which might not today conform entirely to its own highest standards. 

American labor, then, accepts the ideas and principles upon which our 
great nation is founded. When first organized, while politically free, 
economically it was not free. A power stronger than law is an economic 
theory, an economic concept, that is held by the great mass of the 
people, and which finds expression in our judicial, legislative, and indus- 
trial life. And so organized labor, of necessity, had first to combat the 
theory that it was not on a par with every other factor in industry. 
Today we have reached a point where all factors in industry are con- 
sidered equal. It is true we still have among us those who preach their 
philosophy of despair, who cannot see any hope for the improvement 
of human kind in our present so-called capitalistic order, and who feel 
that it is only by violence or by legal revolution that a better under- 
standing can obtain beween members of the human family. Leading 
trade unionists, however ,and the vast majority of organized wage earn- 
ers in America realize that we are proceeding on a basis which is going 
to make for a better, a closer, and a more harmonious understanding 
between all of our people regardless of their station of life or occupa- 
tion; that there ts not inherently that opposition between capital and 
labor whtch the radicals would have us believe. Indeed, there 1s 
manifesting itself everywhere concrete evidence and demonstration of 
the fact that the so-called capitalistic system affords full opportunity 
for capital and labor to respond to their mutual interests and by so 
responding to improve conditions of citizenship and the nation as a whole. . 

In recent years, since trade unions have come to be recognized as 
established institutions, there has come to them the consciousness and 
the forced realization that with power and influence come duties and 
responsibilities to the body politic. With that realization there has come 


90 


the need for an enlarged vision, a broader outlook, a more cooperative 
spirit within industry. 

Today, organized labor is not required as in the past to seek to attain 
its ends by pure militant force. Today, labor realizes the value of 
education, that great mass power it possesses, and the need of developing 
that power and directing it into channels that will prove helpful and 
serviceable, not alone to those directly concerned, but to the entire nation. 

Primarily our purpose is to seek to equalize and to balance the con- 
tracting power between the corporate employer and the individual wage 
earner, and in that we are again performing what I believe to be a great 
public service. For, up to the present time, the human mind has not 
yet devised an instrumentality more suitable for the maintenance and 
perpetuity of our American principles of government, than the idea of 
freedom of contract. And yet, if not safeguarded, it might very readily 
be converted into an instrumentality of oppression. For when contracting 
parties are not upon an equality basis, the agreement entered into does 
not bear that semblance of mutuality and of fair consideration required 
under our laws in every other form of bargaining. 

And so, with the development of the large industrial corporation on 
the one hand, an arbitrary, artificial creature of the state, endowed with 
capacities far beyond that given to any individual, if there be not some 
balancing power on the other side in behalf of the wage earner, then the 
contract idea, the greatest instrument for the protection of life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness, will only be converted into an instrument 
of oppression. In organizing the wage earners, in balancing the con- 
tracting powers, we have again made possible the continuation of this 
ideal relationship that has been so well builded in our wonderful country. 

While, that, of course, is the prime work of the trade union movement, 
and thereby labor seeks to express its interest in industry, to obtain its 
reward for services contributed, to establish more helpful and healthful 
conditions of work and life, that is not the end of its interest nor the sole 
purpose of its existence. With fairer wages established and fairer work- 
ing hours made possible, the American wage earner has had time to give 
consideration to broader problems not affecting the worker immediately, 
but having a real relation to the worker of tomorrow as well as to in- 
dustry itself. Labor in America today seeks not only wages for the 
moment, not only improvment in working conditions and hour regulation, 
but seeks likewise to make industry secure and to perpetuate its well- 
being, so that as the years roll by, the opportunities for rendering service 
and earning a livelihood may not be curtailed. 

Labor today is of necessity concerned with the same problems that 
capital is interested in. J/ndustry contains three vital factors—capital, 
management, and labor, and it is impossible to separate them. Without 


91 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


any one of those elements, chaos and destruction would follow. And 1f 
that be true, it is essentially imperative that these three factors endeavor 
to come to a common understanding and by a common procedure work 
out together the problems of industry and of life. 

American labor is fast coming to that point. In the productive field 
wonderful progress has been made, though we are not yet satisfied. 
Understand that we are a large group, moving slowly but surely, moving 
in a course that is not paved with cement road, but built upon ruts and 
where there are many obstacles both from within and from without. We 
have yet some employers who conceive wage earners as mere hands, not 
as men; who employ workers not as John, Bill, or Jim, but as so many 
numbers. The human equation is yet lacking. But it is a happy com- 
mentary upon our industrial life, that the number of such employers is 
fast decreasing and that the number of those who look upon their em- 
ployes as co-workers and not as mere hands or numbers is enlarging con- 
stantly and rapidly. 

While we have obstacles from patios we also have difficulties from 
within and they are perhaps the more serious. ‘That, too, is understand- 
able, for we have in our midst many wage earners from Europe who 
have not been able to discard the teachings, traditions, and customs of 
older countries, who labor under fearful hatreds engendered abroad. 
And in that group within our movement radical propagandists find 
quick root for their doctrines. Thus we have the struggle of bring- 
ing home to this class of workers the light of America, the intelligence 
of American wage earners, the customs and traditions of our own people, 
and of making them hopeful citizens, who realize that our institutions 
and our great land afford opportunity for hope and betterment of life, 
and not for revolutionary and destructive theories, policies, and practices. 

Let me say right here that while everything is comparatively serene 
in our land and while we believe our institutions are secure, and that 
there is no danger to them such as threatens in the older countries, there 
was a time when our institutions were seriously threatened, when foreign 
propagandists were making considerable headway, when the American 
Labor Movement and its leaders had to exert themselves to the extreme 
to rid our ranks of these dangerous and foreign propagandists. Today 
we are almost the sole organized body of people which is resisting 
the alluring and subtle attempts being made to give recognition to 
that destructive philosophy of government in Russia, which seeks to 
destroy private interest and private property, and in so doing to under- 
mine the principles of our very nation and allow foreign propagandists 
to get control of the American mind and working man. 

But I am not here to talk on that subject. I allude to it merely to 
indicate that our problems are broad and many, profoundly interesting, 


92 


and of deep concern not only to industry but to our whole body politic. 
In our industrial life, we have come to realize the value of education as 
opposed to militancy, the moulding of the wage earner’s mind, the bring- 
ing home to him of the problems not only of his workshop but the prob- 
lems of the industry itself. We are today looking upon empioyer and 
employe as co-investors; the employer putting in the capital, the wage 
earner his service, intelligence, his skilled craftsmanship, so that the 
interests of both are closely related and of necessity inter-dependent. 

We are beginning to undertake movements tending to bring employer 
and employe through management into complete accord, to perfect our 
productive processes, believing that then our distribution and consumption 
problems will likewtse be happily solved. 

In some instances labor is taking the lead. I am not going to burden 
you with a recital of what is going on in the various industries but may 
I just briefly allude to the printing industry of which I am a part. In 
most of the printing trades, the employers as a group and employes as 
a union, while we have our economic difficulties, nevertheless are joining 
forces to study the problems of our respective occupations and 
are seeking by cooperation and agreement to work out the laws of 
industry for the purpose of eliminating waste, increasing the efficiency 
and productivity of the individual unit plant, as well as of the wage 
earner, that we may raise the standard and make more secure the future 
and permanent welfare of our trade! 

I understand that Mr. Berry, President of the International Printing 
Pressmen’s Union, appeared before you a year ago and told you of their 
wonderful school and home in Tennessee. I don’t know whether he 
advised you of the corps of engineers employed for the purpose of aiding 
newspaper publishers to improve the quality of the daily papers. I 
might go on and describe to you the extensive school development of the 
International Typograhpical Union for the purpose of improving its 
craftsmanship. I might relate to you what we as photoengravers are 
doing, requiring all our apprentices to attend school outside of working 
hours, carrying on research work in order that the craft may be built up; 
indeed, sometimes leading our employers in matters that are of more 
direct concern to them than of immediate effect upon ourselves. 

In the railroad industries we find the same development taking place, 
and in the building trades, where, in a number of cities, young men enter- 
ing those crafts and occupations are required to go to trade schools and 
vocational classes, all designed not only to save the artisanship of today, 
but to improve upon it, to make for a vocational standard, to furnish a 
trade education, a broader vision and a greater knowledge, not merely 
of the manual performance of work but of its relation to all of the 
interests involved in industry. 


93 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Are we not, then, performing a great public service? Are we not, 
then, leaving a strong and helpful impress upon our industrial life? Are 
we not, then, following such methods and practices as are deserving of _ 
cooperation and helpfulness, instead of indifference, apathy, and, alto- 
gether too often, hostility and opposition? 

Review our record, reflect upon our deeds, consider our endeavors for 
social legislation, and you will find invariably that what we seek to ac- 
complish is intended for the good of all. There was a time when labor 
was denounced because it sought increased wages. ‘Today there is little 
condemnation on this ground. This theory of organized labor is recog- 
nized as essential for the well-being of the whole of our people. We are 
beginning to realize that where there is great mass production, unless we 
develop the consuming power of our people in proportion to our increas- 
ing productive capacities, we are bound to face ultimate ruination, for 
of what advantage is it to produce, if we do not at the same time develop 
a people capable of consuming what is produced? 

We have made mistakes and shall again make mistakes. We claim 
no privilege or exemption. For when we review the activities of man- 
kind in general, we find that it is but human to err and that after all 
it is from the experience and errors of the past, that we learn what is 
right and of permanent service. In that spirit, American labor has gone 
on its way and will always shape its policy and activities. I am sure 
that the time will come when we shall no longer think of “labor prob- 
tems” in a spirit of hostility and opposition, but we shall come 
together in conferences such as you have here, review our problems from 
the cooperative point of view, with the purpose of labor serving capital, 
capital serving labor, and both joining to serve the great American 
public! 


Discussion of Mr. Woll’s Address. 


C. R. Towson: Last evening we were lifted into the realm of high 
thinking as we followed the interpretation of the conditions in industry 
of that master of thought and of expression, who represented to us the 
Manufacturers’ Association, Mr. Emery. This evening I may use the 
same words—we were lifted to a high level of thought and expression 
as we followed the interpretation of a man who represents the American 
Federation of Labor. I count it a great privilege to live in a day when 
we may sit and learn at the feet of both contributors. There have 
come to you quesions as you have listened to Mr. Woll and I wonder 
whether you would like now to ask him some of those questions which 
I have heard you ask on the porch as we have talked together. 

DELEGATE: I would like to ask Mr. Woll if Brookwood Labor » 
College is being fostered by the American Federation of Labor. 


94 


MattHew Wott: The Brookwood Labor College is not fostered by 
the American Federation of Labor. 

DELEGATE: In your judgment what is the chief need within the 
ranks of organized labor today? Is it education or more intelligent 
leadership ? | 

MatTrHew Wo L_L: I would not care to speak of leadership because 
I would then be placed in the position of judging men associated with 
me in this work on a comparative basis. But that there is room for 
further intelligence among the wage earners as a whole is undisputed. 
Labor has sought as best it could to develop the intelligence of the 
great mass. We realize that even our public school system, intended 
to train the youth of today and the worker of tomorrow, does not go 
as far as it should, and so labor of its own accord, to supplement public 
activity, is instituting classes and colleges, encouraging the adult worker 
to learn and to learn still more, to secure knowledge not only of the affairs 
of his nation but of his industry and of his fellowman. Surely there is 
room for improvement intellectually among all of us. 

CHESTER E. Taytor, Y M C A, Orange, N. J.: I was interested in 
what you said about the future of industry, and was comparing that 
with a charge I frequently hear made, especially in the building trades, 
that it is the practice of organized labor to so limit the number of candi- 
dates who may be admitted to apprenticeship, that the number of journey- 
men will be limited, and thus wages will be kept high. Is it a true state- 
ment of fact and on what basis may the fact be justified? 

MATTHEW WoLL: Your statement about limitation of apprentices in 
certain trades is true. Your deduction from it, however, is not well 
founded. The trades, of course, seek to conserve their skill and stand- 
ards of workmanship. If they had no apprenticeship system requiring 
essential training and making that possible, their standard of work- 
manship would soon be dissipated. Now please understand that you 
may point to one or more instances where these rules are used in 
a way that may not be commendable. These exceptions do not prove the 
rule and it is contended by me that we are seeking perfection and respond- 
ing in that direction. The thought I wish to impress is that the leadership 
in the American Labor Movement is directing its energies and efforts 
toward that end. I know apprenticeship rules in some instances are 
violated. In the main, however, where apprenticeship conditions prevail 
they are working out satisfactorily to employer and employe. 

Gro. HENNING, Belmont Smelting and Refining Company, Brooklyn, 
N. Y.: How many members are there in the American Federation of 
Labor? 

MatrHew Wott: The membership of the American Federation of 
Labor is first of all based upon those who have been paying dues to the 


95 


Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


Federation. That paid up membership is about three million. It is fair 
to assume that those who are unemployed, not paying any dues, are about 
half a million. So that the Federation directly in membership has be- 
you must bear in mind the Brotherhoods and a number of other organ- 
izations that are not in affiliation with the American Federation of Labor ; 
so that the organized forces of America would range between five and 
six million. : 

NoEL SarGENT, National Association of Manufacturers, New York, 
N. Y.: Mr. Woll declared that American organized labor has power at 
the present time and they have recognized that with power there goes 
responsibility to the body politic. - And he later declared that he believed 
the American Federation of Labor to be performing a public service 
in connection with certain of its activities. In the press of the last few 
days, there were references to labor leaders visiting President Coolidge 
and declaring their opposition to any public regulation of industrial dis- 
putes of any sort. Whether or not those newspapers were correct, we do 
know that in his testimony before the Lockwood Committee in New 
York City, Samuel Gompers declared that the American Federation of 
activities of labor organizations. 

Now if there is to be public responsibility it would seem that such 
responsibility can be administered either through the courts or the legis- 
lature, either of which may be said to represent the public. As I under- 
stand it, organized labor declares that the courts should not have the 
power to interfere with reference to labor disputes which, of course, 
primarily concern the public; and furthermore, Mr. Gompers declared 
it to be the position of the American Federation of Labor that it is 
opposed to any curb by legislative bodies, to regulate or make forcible 
contracts with employers. I would like to have Mr. Woll explain 
whether the Federation adheres to that attitude still and if so whether 
it is consistent wih his statement that the American Federation of Labor 
feels it has a responsibility to the body politic. 

MatrHew Wott: I don’t agree with your statement as to labor’s 
attitude upon the subject, and hence I cannot answer yes or no to your 
question. 

In the legislative field organized labor takes the position that it is 
opposed to compulsory arbitration or compulsory judgments of industrial 
relationships, and in that attitude it does not stand alone, for the manu- 
facturers also agree with that point of view, and only very recently the 
American Bar Association meeting in Denver, Colorado, in convention, 
on the report of the committee especially delegated to investigate that 
subject, agreed with the policy of the American Federation of Labor. 
Any other course would immediately terminate the right to freedom of 
contract. 


96 


Now as to restriction by action of courts, there is, of course, consider- 
able contention as to labor's attitude on that subject, but the developments 
in New York State, the attitude of the judiciary and of Governor Smith, 
fully confirm the position of labor, that equity courts ought not, by ex 
parte hearing, without open trial and presentation of evidence, issue a 
restraining order, before giving the other party a chance to come in court. 
So we-do contest against that system of judicial control by injunction 
through ex parte action without giving equality of opportunity to the 
other side to present its case. 

C. R. Towson: If you were to be asked whether organized labor does 
purposely restrict production, would you consider that a proper question? 

MatTHew Wo Lt: I do not deny that there are some trades, where 
methods are in vogue that are a check upon production and which, viewed 
from the outside, could find no cause for commendation or continuation. 
I have in mind some restrictive rules in some organizations that I per- 
sonally would not approve of, and yet, when we view the historic back- 
ground that has led to those rules, and some of them promulgated at the 
instigation and the desire of employers who have increased arbitrarily 
the unit of production, you can then understand the hesitancy with which 
labor seeks to give up those rules, forcing its men into idleness, and 
making them suffer the penalty of a readjusting of that industry. There 
are such rules, they are unjustified, they are not, however, to be simply 
condemned; but both employer and employe ought to cooperate in elim- 
inating them, not inflicting punishment solely upon the workmen, but 
having the industry bear the burden of the change. On the other hand, 
I could point to any number of instances where efforts are being made to 
make the men more efficient to lessen duplication of work, to give them 
that spirit of creation which will produce more individually and col- 
lectively. 

Pee Ubiaseey es Vek eLassnic« N.-)].: I..come trom. Passaic, and 
we have down there not only a strike but a social revolution, and I think 
it fair to say that most right-thinking people believe in the right of col- 
lective bargaining. I wanted to ask the speaker if he would tell us the 
position of the American Federation of Labor as to a so-called employe 
representation plan or works council. 

MattrHew Wott: ‘The employe representation plan, or the company 
union organization, from our pont of view, is helpful, in that it vindicates 
our position as to the necessity of labor organizing and acting collectively 
for the promotion and safeguarding of its labor, and bringing about that 
equality of contractual relations which should of necessity obtain. 

As to its efficiency in the ultimate end, we do not believe that form 
of organization can give the best results. Experimentation thus far 
of course indicates that good has been accomplished by company unions, 


97 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


that they are of a permanent character, and may perform some of the 
functions of the trade union movement. But we cannot agree with that. 
If the company union were to become an established fact, it might pos- 
sibly reach the dangerous stage that it threatened to assume in England 
during the Great War, when the Shop Steward Movement developed. 
And I am wondering if those interested in developing company unions 
unions and the so-called employe representation scheme are aware of 
the possible dangers likely to arise out of that form of organization. 

Then bear in mind, too, that company unions do not intend to equalize 
the cost of production of the various competing factors and that they 
are not a solution for the industry as a whole. They may be a temporary 
expedient for the lessening of industrial conflict for particular industrial 
units, but they are not an ultimate cure-all. 

C. R. Towson: You would have been interested, sir, to hear how Mr. 
Emery said in his address last evening that the trades unions have very 
real advantages. Wouldn’t that stir you? And now to hear Mr. Woll 
say that the company unions have their advantages is very thrilling. 

DELEGATE: What is the attitude of the leaders of organized labor 
toward piece work? 

MattHew WoLL: Of course I cannot express any collective attitude 
on that subject because the basis of estimating the value of service 
rendered differs so widely in the different industries that what may be 
true in one industry is not true of another. Now, for instance, compen- 
sation in some industries is based entirely on time service, regardless of 
the production within time. In others there is production within time 
service. In others they are paid entirely on piece rate. Others are paid, 
like the miners, on a tonnage rate. In the steel industry, men are paid 
on the market price. 

It is true in some industries where the production is more of a me- 
chanical nature, and where the flow of production is constant, that the 
element of time or of quantity of production within time is an elemental 
factor and tends to be an incentive toward further creation. And then 
again you find another industry where the amount produced has no re- 
lation to the time. 


98 


Some Comments and Testimonies From Delegates 


“This is an ideal American conference, for we are all together here on 
the same level—employers and employes; capital, labor, and the public.” 

“I think this getting together on a basis where we feel we can speak 
frankly and without any fear of criticism is one of the greatest things 
in the Silver Bay Conference. We cannot help carrying away some of 
the wonderful spirit created here.” 

‘What has impressed me most is the evidence of growing cooperation 
between labor and management to give better service to the public.” 

“Practically every speaker has stressed the importance of a better- 
thought-out method of education for both employer and employe on the 
right lines and of getting this whole question of human relations 
straightened out.” 

“I have been convinced that you cannot get beyond the Golden Rule. 
Every speaker who has made statements on right relations in industry 
has gone back to it!” 

“Regardless of whether we went to Hague to mass this morning or 
whether we attend the Protestant Church or the Jewish Synagogue, the 
vital question is our relation to our God and the revelation of Himself to 
the world, that makes it possible for men to get hold of that faith which 
is a spiritual unseen force and put into action that without which no 
program of industrial relationships will endure.” 

“IT have always looked upon the Master Workman of Galilee as the 
greatest solver of the world’s labor problem. If we were to follow 
his principles absolutely, we would certainly; come to a realization 
of right human relationships. To my mind the outstandifg spirit of this 
whole conference is the spirit of faith in the fundamental principles 
that the Nazarene taught—the gospel of work, of wages, of justice in 
dealing with labor and the square deal for everybody.” 

‘Patience, courtesy, Christian sympathy—everything that makes up 
our Christian ideal we find on these grounds.” 

“*We are members one of another.’ We cannot get away from the 
fact that practically every day here we heard this message or one of a 
similar character.” 

“You cannot measure it but if it gets a chance, the Golden Rule will 
certainly work in industry.” 

“Tf the management of the mills in a certain city could have been at 
Silver Bay last year there would have been no need for a strike in that 
city ts 

‘“T am profoundly impressed with the practical ideas presented—not 
just pretty theories which have been handed to us before.’” 

‘“T think we have conclusive proof that a greater degree of spirituality 
is entering into our industrial ranks.” 

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Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


“I come home always from these conferences with enthusiasm in my 
heart, and zeal in my soul, and I thank God I have had the privilege 
_of coming again.” | 

“The outstanding impression from hearing all these talks is that in- 
dustry has come to the conclusion, after careful consideration, that the 
main product of our factories is men.” 

“What moved me most was the meeting some of us had at breakfast, 
when three men representing three branches of religious thought in 
America each spoke of the spiritual value of this conference.” 

“T want to testify to you from the standpoint not of the Y M C A or 
religious propaganda, but per capita production, and mill efficiency, and 
community standards, that those industries in which employes and em- 
ployers have the saturation of spiritual forces, those communities in which 
there is kept alive through churches and schools a dynamic Christian 
emphasis are those where the people are happiest and where per capita 
production 1s largest.” 

“As a result of meetings of this kind, we come to that definition and 
understanding of religion that enables us to see that it is life and not 
work, that it is action and not intellectual concepts, that it is a fellowship 
of men of like-minded mutuality, rather than dogmatic adherence to an 
organized form.” 

“T have been deeply impressed by this conference, as I have been by 
all that I have attended. It has not seemed possible that the pace that 
was started nine years ago could continue and become finer and better. 
But it absolutely has. We have taken for granted this year things 
that were still-doubtful in 1917 and 1918.” 

“From Troy there have been more than five hundred different people 
at these annual conferences. They have come from nearly every factory 
in the city and also from professional life. As a result the Silver Bay 
ideas and ideals have gone all through our city and accomplished an 
enormous amount of good.” 

“Here leaders of both capital and labor stressed that particular philo- 
sophy of the relationship of man to man, which I have never heard in 
any other conference: ‘No man liveth unto himself’ socially, industrially, 
nationally, or internationally. This conference is an outstanding ex- 
pression of the dynamic leadership of the Master Leader of all time.” 

“What struck me most was the earnest desire of everyone here to be 
of service. I am not extravagant in my hope that this conference will 
grow into such a great influence that its effect will be felt throughout all 
the countries, and be of benefit to the whole human race.” (From a 
foreign delegate. ) 


100 


INDUSTRY AND RELIGION 


Dr. William J. Hutchins 
President, Berea College, Kentucky 


I have been asked to speak this morning on Religion 
and Industry. As illustrating the attitude of ancient 
scriptures toward this relationship, I would read to 
you the words of Ecclesiasticus thirty-eighth chapter: 
‘These maintain the fabric of the world, and in the 
handiwork of their craft is their prayer.” Illustrating 
the attitude of the New Testament toward that re- 
lationship, | would read Paul’s words, in Romans 14:8, 
words written to men whom the world called quarrymen, shoemakers, 
slaves; “Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, whether we die, we die 
~ unto the Lord.” 

Among the prophets of our time, none are heard with more complete 
acquiescence than those who tell us of the dechristianizing, the dereligion- 
izing of modern industry. We are told that after the virtues fostered 
by Puritanism had brought capitalism to birth capitalism straightway 
forgot the virtues and the religion of the Puritans. We are told that to 
the man in industry religion is at best a solace in domestic affliction, but 
has no part in the life of shop, factory, or office. 

The passages, which I have used as mottos rather than texts, show 
clearly enough that the religion we profess has never acknowledged such 
limitation. For Hebrew and early Christian thought there was no de- 
partmentalization of religion and industry. The divorce of industry 
from religion, if true, and in so far as it is true, involves more serious 
consequences today than it would have involved in any previous period. 
The fate of the world in politics and in social reform ts more largely im 
the hands of business men than in the hands of politicians, preachers, 
lawyers, or any other group. 

What then has industry to do with religion? Industry should mean to 
us, not a vague abstraction, but a multitude of men, women, and children 
engaged in the production, manufacture, and distribution of goods. But 
what should Religion mean to us? JI must answer at once that in this day, 
with our passion for reality, with our desire to debunk society, the pro- 
ducers of the world cannot be satisfied to call that religion, which con- 
sists merely of the dedication of money to some deity. The bandit robs 
a wayfarer, and surrenders a portion of his booty to the deity, whose 
eyes look down upon him in gracious pardon from the grotto by the 
roadside, and he and the deity are presumably content. Churches, mon- 
asteries, schools, orphanages have all been endowed by industrial mag- 


101 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


nates and malefactors, for the peace of their souls; but nowadays souls 
don’t find much peace that way. Prophets have been too busy with us. 
“City of festering streets, by Misery trod, 
Where half-fed, half-clad children, swarm unshod, 
Whilst thou dost rear thy splendid fane to God.” 

Nor can the producers of the world call that religion, which consists 
merely of ceremonies and ritual. You may have seen the famous, notori- 
ous shrine of Kalighat, happily connected by tram with the commercial 
city of Calcutta. There, little goats, after a bath in the dirty waters of 
the river, are slaughtered and their blood presented to the goddess Kali. In 
Benares, well called the City of Trampled Flowers, you will see. obese 
sinners striving by fasting and ablutions to get right with God. “But 
whether we be religious or not we know that any God who could compel 
our worship, must say to us with the God of Amos, “Take thou away 
from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy 
viols.. Let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a perennial 
stream.” 

Still further, industry can never count that religion, which consists 
merely of words offered to Deity, words, however beautiful, however 
artistic, however sustained by sweet strains of music. Jesus strikes home 
to the heart of everyone of us in this disillusionized age of ours when 
He says: “Not everyone that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which 
is in heaven.” | , 

Nor again can industry call that religion, which engages itself merely 
with bane or bliss in the after world. Dr. Hocking tells us that in a cer- 
tain military school the pious boys were called ‘‘Hell dodgers.” Any 
religion, to claim the attention of industry, must engage itself not so much 
to save us from the fires of hell, as to abolish hell right here and now, ~ 
with “our fresh souls, our younger hopes, and God’s maturity of purpose.” 
“A religious man,” says Fort Newton, “is one who is aware, dimly or 
clearly, that his life is one with a vast kindred Life, in whose near 
neighborliness and far friendliness he and all men are united to fulfill 
their duty and destiny.” 

We who are in the world of industry, where men, women, and children 
fight bare handed with the naked facts of life, must have a religion like 
that, or better than that. Above all the masters of the world, Jesus has 
been able to bring to men the assurance and the persistent consciousness 
of a near-neighborly and far-friendly vast, kindred Life; and for us 
religion should mean the relation which a man may have with the 
creative good will at the heart of the world, the good will proclaimed, 
and incarnated by Jesus Christ. 

We look then into the faces of millions of our brothers and sisters in 


102 


their activities as producers, and walk in company with them, as they, in 
the garb of labor, move into the presence of the God of Jesus, to ask 
whether those who toil as they toil, may find their lives dominated, 
penetrated, permeated, by His vast kindred Life. 

_ And I note that whether we like it or not, whether we are conscious 
of it or not, we in industry are living unto the Lord. Industry is dealing 
day by day with the gifts of God to his children. A few days ago 1 
was at Glens Falls. I saw the great dam and the flumes of the pulp mills, 
which control and direct the waters of the Hudson. What have you 
there? Water, that wondrous gift of God, caught up from God’s ocean 
by the blessed uplift of God’s sun, borne in God’s cloud ships, argosies 
to be wrecked by God’s design against God’s mountains; water, then, to 
be hidden safely in God’s springs, thence to flow down God’s valleys, as 
a river of God, full of water, down to a dam, which men have made in 
turn out of God’s rocks and ore and wood. Not an industry represented 
here this morning, but often handles with soiled, ignorant, irreverent, 
and thankless hands, the gifts of God in the raw materials of industry! 

Nor can we forget that the very brains which we use in every industry, 
to devise instruments of precision, to register the infinitesimal, the brains 
which dream of Woolworth buildings and Leviathans, of aeroplanes and 
submarines, are God’s gifts to us. You noticed the recent statement in 
the Atlantic Monthly that French scientists have listened to the star 
Capella, whose light has been traveling more than forty years to reach 
our globe and was transmuted into sound by the use of photoelectric 
cells. Brains which can dream such dreams and contrive instruments to 
make those dreams realities, are themselves the gifts of the creative good 
will at the heart of the world. 

Again, industry succeeds in the measure in which it seeks and finds 
and bows in intelligent homage to the laws of God in the natural world. 
In every great factory as well as in every great university, is the group of 
scientists, studying, experimenting—why? To find the laws, by which 
God mediates His gifts, by obeying which the industry may prosper. 
You remember the story of Edison, with his phonograph. He sent into 
his experimental mechanism the word “‘specia,” and the word always 
came back to him, “pecia.” And day after day, night after night, the 
wizard worked—why? To find the divine law in obedience to which he 
might become master. Every product of every industry represented here 
is probably the direct outcome of the work of the scientist, who, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, has sat in the school room of God, until the 
great Teacher should tell him His secret, His method of working, His 
law. 

Modern industry involves the intimate association of God’s children 
in production. A while ago I met in our mountains an old friend. I 


103 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


said, ‘““Won’t you please show me how you spin.” The old lady, whose 
pipe was by her side, extricated herself from her rheumatism, and with 
incredible speed and skill drew the wool out into thread. She could 
spin and weave for her entire family. The spinning wheel and the loom 
are survivals of a day which in this country has gone forever. No longer 
the isolation of the mountains, but the concentration of hundreds and 
thousands in our factories. Nor is the association of God’s children in 
industry confined alone to those who labor in this country. Industry 
today means an association well-nigh world wide. From Norway and 
France, from Sumatra and the South Seas, from China and Chile gather 
our associates. It is a startling thought that to God’s eyes there can be 
no foreigners; and that the yellow-faced Mongol who works for you in 
the mines of Korea, and the little brown man who in the Malay States 
gashes your rubber trees, each is one of God’s children, toiling in the 
world association of modern industry. 

If the God of Jesus is a reality, with His near neighborliness and his 
far friendliness, then in industry, as we work with God’s children, we 
work for God’s children as well. Industry has its ideal to supply God’s 
children with things, which, to quote, “are necessary, useful, or beautiful, 
and thus bring life to body or spirit.” “In so far,” says a writer, “as it 
is diverted from its purpose, it possesses no more social significance than 
the orderly business of ants and bees, the strutting of peacocks, or the 
struggles of carniverous animals over carrion.” 

Granted the God of Jesus, industry is engaged, ideally, at least, in the 
same task in which God himself is engaged. We see God engaged daily 
in creative work. Thoreau says, ‘‘Earth is still in swaddling clothes, and 
stretches forth baby fingers on every side.” Jesus says, “My Father 
worketh hitherto and I work.” God is ever at work, transforming this 
old chaos of a world into a cosmos, a fair, ordered, and beautiful thing. 
The Swede who cuts the timber from the forest, the Hungarian who 
smelts the ore, the Italian who lays the rails, the American who holds 
the throttle as his locomotive makes its way across the continent, the fore- 
man who mterprets men to management and management to men, the 
executive who devises plans to utilize God’s gifts may all be engaged, 
in the same task in which God himself is engaged. Jenny Lind 
used to say, “I sing for God.” And every toiler in any legitimate field 
of industry has a right to say, “I am a fellow toiler with the Most High.” 

Now I do not for a moment underestimate the facts which would 
blight our faith. I do not forget a writer’s description of “blind matter, 
indifferent to good and evil, rolling on its relentless way.” But this is 
certain: If any one has ever known God, that one is Jesus. If God 
has ever revealed himself, He has revealed himself to Jesus. If Jesus 
is not the revelation of God, then we may never hope for such a revela- | 


104 


tion. If Jesus is deceiver or deceived, if at the heart of the world there 
is no creative good will, then we must despair of any solution of the 
problem of the world, and sit dumb, despairing in a madhouse in which 
we see fashioned out of mud the martyrs, poets, seers, patriots—out 
of mud, your mother and your Master. 

{f this world of ours were God forgotten, or Godless, I think we 
should still huddle together in our madhouse, and try to console each 
other and support each other as best we might. 

But if we are willing to make earnest with our religion, if we are 
willing to grant the God of Jesus, the creative good will at the heart of 
the world, then obviously religion must dominate, penetrate, permeate 
every aspect of industry. For example, it will become unthinkable that 
we should waste God’s gifts, incredible that we should willingly defy 
God’s laws in nature or in our own mental life. In a recent book there 
is this quotation from the editor of the Gas Age Record: “The story of 
the development of life and industry in America is the most amazing 
tale of the waste of wealth by a careless, improvident people the world 
has ever known. We have flooded the air with that wonder fuel, natural 
gas, covered our land with ashes of burned forests, robbed our virgin 
acres of so much of their fertility that in many regions farming as a 
pursuit is about as obsolete as the spinning wheel.” If just once we awake, 
if just once we arise from the dead, become conscious of the most obvious 
facts of faith, then waste and lawlessness will become as impossible to 
us, as it would be impossible for us to cast into a quagmire the tokens 
of a mother’s love. I need not remind you that the most tragic waste 
is that of human energy, human life. If we awake to the fact that we 
live unto the Lord, that fact will prevent us from using persons as things, 
as means to an end, as cogs in the machine. 


I was in a mill the other day. The conditions of labor were fairly 
good; but there I saw boys and girls making the same small turn or shift 
of bits of paper, the same small push of little bits of paper, second after 
second, time after time, for ten hours a day. And that factory quite 
unintentionally is making morons out of fine mountain boys and girls— 
boys and girls with the love and life of unspoiled Americans. That 
highly modernized factory is taking the comrades of Sergeant York and 
of Willie Sandlin, and fashioning them into mindless minders of machines, 
their manhood caught at last and ground to pieces in the machinery. A 
friend of mine stopped a man, as he was leaving a certain modern 
factory. ‘‘What’s your job?” “I make a pin, just so long.” ‘‘How long 
have you been at it?’ “Three years. And it’s just so long.” Arthur 
Pound, business man, journalist, and careful student of industrial 
problems, writes: “So far as the great majority of workers is concerned, 
modern industry presents this phenomenon, the dulling of mind, on a 


105 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


scale unequaled in extent, to a degree unequaled in intensity, by anything 
on record in history. Our tenders of machines are starved in their souls. 
Certain I am that no one but an imbecile could find much delight in 
sharing the daily toil of our mill workers, so mechanized has it become.” 

Now these associates of mine in industry are children of my heavenly 
Father, I can’t dodge that.. And 1f I awake to’ that siactestueue 
can no more set a woman to work at a bending machine, to make the 
same slight movement fifty times a minute, thirty thousand times a day, 
than I could set my own sister to such a job. In China I myself 
have seen in a silk filature little women, their babies on the floor, little 
women, bending over the steam, loosening the silk from the cocoons, 
little women working from six o’clock in the morning till six o’clock at 
night, our little sisters in industry. Does it mean nothing to you, O ye 
that pass by? O yes, it means to you and to me that this sort of thing 
is insufferable and we shall fight it, whether our brothers and sisters 
happen to live in Soochow or in Chicago. 

If we live, frankly, consciously, unto the Lord, then lies in advertssing 
and m manufacturing will be as incredible as palms in Greenland. I was 
told that at a recent meeting of advertisers in Philadelphia, the convention 
adopted the motto “Truth.” It will be a great day when Truth becomes 
the watchword and the practice of advertisers and producers. But if 
religion dominates, penetrates, permeates industry, is the great day remote? 


I hear men say—not many, I think—‘‘That’s all rot. It is lucky for 
you and for industry that you are not in it. You can’t run an industry, 
and be your kind of a Christian.” A great American has left with us 
a challenging question to answer, “Dare we be Christians?” Many a 
man hasn’t the nerve to be a Christian. It is clear that you can’t run 
some industries and be a Christian. It is equally certain that you can’t 
make great profits out of some industries, and still be a Christian. I 
think it entirely possible that a man in industry, who wakes to the facts 
of faith, may go to the wall. Now regarding this possibility several 
things are to be said: The symbol of our religion is a cross. The motto 
of our religion is “Per crucem ad lucem” (through the cross to the light). 
The cross is not merely the symbol of our personal redemption. Jesus 
said to His friends, “If any man would come after me, let him deny 
himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” When He said 
that, He wasn’t thinking of some little gold cross which a clergyman two 
thousand years from that time might wear upon his watch chain or 
some dear little girl might dangle from her necklace. He was thinking 
of the heavy wooden cross, which a criminal in the eyes of Rome might 
bear along the Sorrowful Way, until he should come to the Place of the 
Skull, there to hang upon that cross for hours, till reluctant death might 
come to the rescue. A friend of mine remarked that for a business man 


106 


crucifixion might be translated business failure and this same friend has 
said, “The Christian religion means that all men must sacrifice something, 
and some men must sacrifice everything.” 
We sing quite lustily : 
“Must I be carried to the skies 
On flowery beds, of ease, 
While others fought to win the prize 
And sailed through bloody seas?” 
What answer does that question demand? We translate the song 
to sing: 


“No, there is a cross for everyone, 
For all excepting me.” 


But do we not exaggerate the dangers of the Christian industrialist? I 
note that other men fail in business besides those who are Christians. J be- 
lieve that under ordinary circumstances the Christian man will not fail. 
The man, in the handiwork of whose craft 1s his prayer, will not starve, 
nor will his family starve. 

I was talking with a hotel man. He said that he vowed to God, and 
stated before men that he was going to run a hotel in which a man’s wife 
or daughter: might live, and see no sight of shame, and hear no sound, 
which would cause a blush. One day one of the wealthiest men of the 
state came to his hotel and called to his room certain convivial friends, to 
join him in breaking the law of the land; and the proprietor told that 
man that he must leave the hotel, and he left it. Again a county judge 
and a county attorney attempted to bring to their rooms women and 
wine, and the proprietor told them to get out, and they got out. Did that 
proprietor go out of business? He might have had to go out of business ; 
but his two hotels are Meccas for decent people, who wish to be sur- 
rounded by decency rather than debauchery. 

In contemplating Napoleon on St. Helena, a writer says, “Napoleon 
had no great principles to stand by him.” We sometimes talk as if the 
Christian business man is bound to fail in this crooked world. I am more 
often impressed by the fact that a man fails in this so-called crooked 
world, because he is crooked himself, and the world is so everlastingly 
straight that it strikes directly across the man’s crookedness. 

The man whose labor is dominated, penetrated, permeated by religion 
may not leave a deal of money to damn his children, but he leaves them 
a good name, and a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. 

The man in industry, who knows that he lives unto the Lord, in the 
handiwork of whose craft is his prayer, gains ever and again the sense 
of comradeship with his Lord in the act of creation. It has been said 
that “Abraham Lincoln would have been less amazed and dumfounded 
from the standpoint of material culture in the court of Asurbanipal than 


107 
Dates of Next Conference, September 1 - 4, 1927 


in that of Calvin Coolidge.” Thus we get a hint of the creative acts ‘of 
men in industry, by which in sixty years the face of all the world has 
been changed. | : 

A great-hearted friend of yours comes to you this afternoon, and says 
to you, “Come on, let’s take a walk. We’ll climb to the top of the moun- 
tain, back of the hotel here. [Il show you views you have never seen 
before. I know every foot of the trails.’ So God challenges the man 
in industry; “Come, walk with me. There are heights of vision, of 
achievement which I hold in reserve for the man, who has the nerve, the 
grit, to climb withsme, as once Enoch walked with me, the Great Com- 
panion.” And the business man, who accepts that challenge, and gets a 
new idea.to enrich the-life of.the world will have a more certain view 
of his Lord than the hermit, who in his cell, by self-mortification seeks 
the Vision Splendid. . | 

And he knows, what the poet means, when he says:: 

“Ofttimes cometh our wise Lord God, 
Master’ of every trade, ) 
And tells them tales. of’ daily toil; 
And of Edens newly made, 
And they rise to their feet, as He passes by 
Gentlemen unafraid.” 

And lastly; I would speak to each one of you personally. We are 
going home. I have given you no elaborate program. Religion is not, 
primarily, a program, It is a spirit, it is a power. Let us go home, not 
to dream airy dreams of Silver Bay, but to put into operation programs 
which may more and more conform to the spirit and purpose of Jesus. 
Our responsibility is graver than we assume. As we handle material 
things we are dealing with eternal values. 

One day the hair will whiten, and the hand which held so firmly the 


helm of the great business, or the lever of the great crane, begins to lose. 


its cunning, and you begin to think of the day when the silver cord will 
be loosed, the golden bowl broken, the pitcher broken at the fountain, the 
wheel broken at the cistern. Or it may be that the wife, who has been 
with you through the long years, shared your trials, laughed at you in 
your irritation and with you in triumph, your wife who has held you 
true to the way of honor, when you might have been crooked, slips from 
you and you can’t hold her from the night. 

But God who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, has shined upon 
you, a man whose hands are hardened by toil, you, who have been 
called a hard-headed business man, and he has given to you the light of 
the knowldege of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

Not as a pretty verse said by some curate above a grave, but as the 
utterance of a heavenly Friend, with whom you have toiled through the 
days, you will hear the word: “He that believeth on me, though he die, 


108 


yet shall he live, and whosoever believeth on me shall never die.” You 
have helped to maintain the fabric of the world, in the handiwork of 
your craft has been your prayer; you have lived freely, gladly unto the 
Lord, and you look undismayed, unafraid, toward the great adventure of 
death and the great achievements of those, who help to build the four 
walls of the New Jerusalem, the City of God. 


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“Good-Bye! Come Again!” 


Additional copies of this report may be secured from the 


INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF 
YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 


347 MADISON AVENUE 
NEW YORK, N.Y. 


109 


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